Final Solution premiered at Berlin International Film Festival in Feb 2004 and created history by winning the Wolfgang Staudte award (now rechristened the Golden Bear for Best Debut), the first ever documentary to win this award.
Final Solution was denied censor certification in July 2004 by CBFC, India, ie, effectively banned. But, following widespread civil society protests and under threat of legal action, CBFC convened a suo moto screening in Oct 2004, clearing the film without a single cut! Interestingly, Final Solution has not one, but three censor certificates- for the 3.5 hour version (Director's Cut), the main 2.5 hour screening version and the Gujarati dubbed version (2.5 hours).
In order to ensure that Final Solution achieved the highest-ever circulation in India, especially in the light of the brief formal ban by CBFC and informal calls for boycott by hard line vigilantes, Rakesh Sharma, the producer-director decided not to sign any distribution deal and opted to self-distribute instead. Among his many maverick initiatives, he launched the Pirate-and-Circulate campaign, wherein anyone promising to make and distribute 10 copies (ie, pirate his film) got a free DVD of the film! He later explained his strategy as a counter to any attempts to bury his film, by enlisting 1000s among his audiences as his distributors and exhibitors. Other strategies included free uploads of the film at many institutional servers, even call-centre intranets. And free in-magazine DVDs to subscribers of niche magazines and alternate journals.
Principal filming for Final Solution began only on Oct 2, 2002, on Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary, over 7 months after the Godhra train incident and the horrific Gujarat riots that followed. Unknown to him at the time, Producer-Director Rakesh Sharma was already battling a worsening autoimmune condition that had first felled him in 1993-94 for 8-9 months. While he was somehow able to push himself to shoot and edit over the next 15-16 months, the autoimmune syndrome kept getting worse, and after 2007, he has never been able to shoot or edit even for 10 days at a stretch without collapsing and being forced to be horizontal. He has been on an ever-extending medical sabbatical since 2011-12.