Toronto: Twenty-three years after 329 people perished when Air India Kaniskha Flight 182 was bombed off the Irish coast, Canadian filmmaker Sturla Gunnarsson has re-enacted the tragedy in his documentary "Air India 182".

Driven by a mind-numbing narrative, chilling footage, re-enactments and interviews with the loved ones of those who perished, "Air India 182" gives this so-called "Indian tragedy" a Canadian perspective.

Perhaps the initial Canadian reaction of not owning this aviation disaster till 9/11 was not lost on Gunnarsson who grew up in Vancouver, where Babbar Khalsa plotted the bombing.

It enraged him that despite the fact that most victims were Canadian citizens, the then Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney sent his condolences to his Indian counterpart Rajiv Gandhi.

"The bombing of Air India had little impact on the Canadian psyche. There was no outrage. There was no debate in parliament. There was a total sense of denial by Canadians," Gunnarsson told IANS at the Canadian International Documentary Festival here where his work premiered last week.

Indeed, "Air India 182" is a very disturbing sequence of events spread over 16 hours before the bombing and the recovery operations: how two bomb-carrying suitcases were checked in at Vancouver airport by an M. Singh, how they were transferred undetected onto Air India flight 182 and another Canadian flight to Tokyo (where it was to put on an Air India flight to India), and how Flight 182 went off radar screens as it approached Ireland.