[3] During the 14-day India-Pakistan war that commenced on 3 December 1971, over 92,000 Pakistani soldiers were captured by India in the western sector, and nearly 500 Indian defense personnel were taken as prisoners by Pakistan.
Pakistan asserted that no more prisoners of war (PoWs) were in their custody, leading the Indian Government to advise families to presume the missing soldiers as deceased and accept monetary compensation.
Tragically, some parents passed away while waiting, some children lost hope faced with bureaucratic obstacles, some spouses remarried, and a few individuals resorted to drastic measures like suicide.
That’s consistent, however, with the film’s overall apolitical tone with little mentions of war’s major players, Indira Gandhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Yahya Khan, or even the background to that conflict.
"[5] Madhuparna Das of The Telegraph India wrote "Hope Dies Last in War is a heart-rending documentary that compels us to think: especially of the fact that we are so impossibly helpless not just as individuals, but also as a community, a nation, a race.