The film opens on the first night of Decchi and Shanti’s wedding. The room is set for the consummation of the marriage, the bride awaits behind her (albeit suffocating) veil, and the groom’s mother has left the necessary measures recommended by the family priest, a pouch of elaichi, in the safe hands of her son. 

It is at this juncture of humor and playfulness that the film develops to present an endearing, heartfelt, and meaningful story about social restrictions, and more importantly, about how they operate differently for men and women. The narrative and screenplay are constructed with thoughtfulness to ensure that humor remains the guiding force throughout. 

Consequently, the message is carried forth with impact, without weighing the film down with preachiness. The characters are authentic and real in their flaws and textures, and are brought to life with notable performances and chemistry. The film communicates this with ease while also ensuring that the viewer is entertained and involved all along.

Elaichi | Short Film of the Month

After nine years in the service, tonight is a momentous one for Alok, a cop who is about to meet Manohar Pandey, a very crucial figure in the world he inhabits. As the plot develops, it presents a moral dilemma. Manohar begins to narrate a story from a couple of years ago, and a palpable intrigue takes over the film. Something is underfoot, something deeply amiss. 

As ideas of right and wrong, and an overarching sense of justice are painted for the viewer, the question that locates itself at the heart of the story becomes what is the best path of reaching the right decision - a traditional one, or something far more brutal? All of this is portrayed with remarkable writing, imbuing the narrative with authenticity, alongside a screenplay construction that enhances it with equal vigour. 

The performances are unmissable, and the background score is created with care. At the film’s conclusion awaits a terrible development, but one that is impossible to look away from.

Praarambh  | Short Film of the Month

A man who runs a small flour mill finds himself at a strange crossroads when technology threatens to make him obsolete. As we follow the protagonist through his day, and customers come and go, it is a sack of mass-produced, machine-ground wheat that becomes the antagonist of the story. 

The film does an expert job of portraying this dynamic between a man who religiously follows his vocation and a swiftly changing world where people become increasingly impatient. The screenplay is constructed with attention to detail, mapping and sustaining the entire developing story with control. The narrative allows no dialogue to the protagonist, and yet, shares a skilled portrayal and communication of an entire array of emotions. 

The end result does not bog itself down with a technology-versus-tradition conflict, and instead only presents a moment with earnestness. The entire cast and crew exhibit seamlessness in bringing it to life, making the authenticity of the said moment its most notable triumph.

Chakkiwala  | Short Film of the Month

A brutal world of cockfighting, equally powerful vocals, and a reality swiftly unfolding into chaos - these form the defining elements of the music video. What begins as an intensely charged moment of two groups of cockfighters devolves into absolute mayhem. As rivalry and bruised egos come to the fore, the characters reach a point of no return. 
The high-energy visuals are constructed with attention to detail and are equally matched by the Tulu song that plays next to all the action. A triumph in terms of the edit, one of the most notable aspects alongside the vocals, nestles itself within the end result, drawing you deeper and deeper into its world. This ensures there is no looking away as the spilled blood presents a movement from animals to humans, the violence stretching itself from one set of beings to another.

Smoke of Vengeance  | Short Film of the Month

The film introduces us to a household of men, two sons, and their elderly father. As the story develops, we discover that perhaps a woman who had tied them all together left too soon, and now the fault lines have appeared within these relationships. 

There are disagreements, the frustration and worry of two sons, Jay and Aman, whose father refuses to cooperate with his medication or any of the care that his sons try to provide for him. There are backhanded comments about a household, that of Jay, that did not last. All of this develops with the constant presence of Tom and Jerry in the background due to the youngest of them all, little Kunal. 

A brief glimpse into Kunal’s relationship with his grandfather presents an unexpected moment of quiet and peace in all of these fraught equations. The resultant narrative becomes one defined by expert storytelling and narratorial construction. There is further an earnest exploration of loss, grief, and how they become nestled within the complexities and nuances of a familial unit.

Nirvaan  | Short Film of the Month

‘Tholumadan’ are monsters that take human form and kill anyone who recognises their true identity. The film, set in the early 1960s, introduces the viewer to this truth of its realm right at the start, immediately establishing the tone of what is to come. We explore this world through the eyes of Appu, a little boy who impatiently awaits the return of his father from the Indo-China War. 

In the face of news of all kinds of tragedies, and against all hope, Appu’s father returns, but the war has left him completely changed. Through engagement with the trauma that he still carries in his heart, taking the form of all kinds of inexplainable situations for the little boy in Appu, we are presented a world of horrifying realizations - a different kind of horror for adults, one of wars and PTSD, and of completely different kinds for a child, of monsters that only masquerade as humans, but perform strange acts in the darkness of the night. The film explores all of this with skill and very controlled dialogue, the gaps filled with a thoughtful and expert background score. The action unfolding on screen also keeps the viewer engaged, finally presenting a story that employs trauma as horror.

Tholumadan | Short Film of the Month

Two men, employees of the local hospital, have arrived in a new town for work with their respective day and night shifts. Their living quarters have already been allotted, and they have little say in the matter, even when the strangest occurrences begin. 

The house is dusty with bad wiring and flickering lights. For one of them, who is more inclined towards astrology and a belief in the supernatural, the house seems like the perfect setting for a haunting. Additionally, the quarter has a dark history and a brutal past that includes a woman and her baby. It is in this manner that the decrepit house with its old, forgotten objects, attains a life of its own when nights become plagued with singing in a woman’s voice. 

The background score, screenplay and visual grammar construct an eerie world with seamlessness and skill. At the same time, the writing explores the many forms fear can take, and what it eventually comes to mean for both of our characters. All of these components ensure that the story is realized with impact, and that the end result conveys the film’s core message expertly, and with clarity.

Pallavi Ammal  | Short Film of the Month

The film presents a story of harassment and stalking, but does so with uniqueness in storytelling. The freshness in its approach ensures that the viewer is glued to the narrative right till the very end, as the protagonist, Megh, takes them deeper and deeper into his world. 

Megh is a writer who, one night, stumbles upon a strange man with a strange query. The film moves back and forth in time as Megh recounts his ordeal to three other characters, each with their own approach to the encounters he describes. 

The film’s biggest strength is what it achieves at the level of thought. It presents a fluidity of roles, and that they can be quite different for the same person depending on the context they are placed in. The story further presents the internal journey that the protagonist goes on as a result of this harrowing experience, and what all of it entails for his identity as a writer. 

The title is explored and engaged with, alongside the life of a city which can sometimes be as forgiving as Mumbai. There is an interaction with the ideas of justice as well. Though there is a slight lack of seamlessness when it comes to the film’s sound department, it is easy to overlook it in the face of the performances, writing, and narratorial progression that the film offers. The ideas thus presented are seeds of thoughts that should definitely be allowed to grow in more projects.

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