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Back in January, Mischa Barton and Martin Sheen were busy filming the movie Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain in India.
As of today on IMDB, the film is listed as completed but still in production, and doesn’t have a release date. That’s a real shame because this movie really needs to be released in the United States.
Why? Because it is a true story about a horrible atrocity, in fact it is considered the world’s worst industrial accident ever. On Dec. 3, 1984, a Union Carbide pesticide plant accidently released 42 tons of methyl isocynate (MIC) gas, exposing literally hundreds of thousands to the toxic gases. Reportedly, almost 10,000 people instantly died that day, leaving more than 100,000 with life-long illnesses and causing birth defects even today.
Today, the site of the pesticide plant (Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemical) has yet to be cleaned up properly. Destitute children and families drink and bathe in groundwater more than likely still containing pesticides.
On Dec. 3, the people of Bhopal, India and others marked the 25th anniversary of the event to draw attention to their story.
As Amnesty International’s video says, a healthy environment is a human right. By ignoring this tragedy, we are treating the victims as expendable people, one activist says in the video.
I am proud of Mischa Barton and Martin Sheen for taking on these roles. Mischa plays Eva, a reporter, while Martin Sheen is basically “the devil” in the movie. He plays the former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson who avoided prosecution in India by fleeing back to the United States to avoid extradiction. If this had happened in the United States and was caused by another country’s business, we in the United States would hold that company responsible to the highest count possible. But instead, it was pushed under the rug and the CEO was allowed to enjoy the rest of his life while countless numbers of people in India deal with the aftermath every day. Yes, Union Carbide did do some things to rectify the situation, but not enough, not nearly enough.
Why should this movie come out? So people who have never heard of this tragedy learn about it, and hopefully, make it right, and those who remember the tragedy learn that nothing has really changed since 1984 – and the suffering that existed then still exists today.
Here are few more videos about the 25th anniversary that are truly heartbreaking:
[...] Martin Sheen. There hasn’t been a release date for the movie yet, but the movie is completed. Bhopal recently held a 25th anniversary of the event, so maybe it will come out in [...]