The CBC docudrama Air India 182 is a startling reconstruction of a national tragedy

By Stephen Cole, CBC News

This docudrama airs June 22nd on CBC, check your local listings. 

This Sunday’s CBC docudrama, Air India 182, offers welcome answers and explanations to the puzzle that remains the worst mass murder and most expensive trial in our nation’s history. Still, many Canadians will likely be dismayed by the implications of Vancouver filmmaker Sturla Gunnarsson’s reconstruction of the 1985 aircraft bombing, a terrorist act that left 329 passengers dead, 280 of them Canadian citizens.

Gunnarsson’s film, which airs on June 22 without commercial interruption, offers a vivid reenactment of events leading to the bombing. Amateur actors play the Indian-Canadian families who unknowingly exchange final goodbyes in the Vancouver and Toronto airports. Meanwhile, CSIS and RCMP operatives (also actors) listen in on an evident conspiracy lead by Vancouver Sikh separatists Ripudaman Singh Malik and Talwinder Singh Parmar.

“Have you written the story yet?” one terrorist asks over a bugged telephone.

“The story is written.”

“Good.”