India is a country where the career route of a child is decided and set in stone pretty much from the time of their birth. If you’re not an IIT engineer, are you an engineer at all? Young boys and girls spend years and years of their lives and invest resources of all kinds into preparing for the entrance, often disregarding other essential things like their mental well-being and inter-personal relationships. At the end of it all, what if they don’t succeed? What are their returns from everything that they gave to their preparation?
The short film attempts to raise all of these questions and tries to draw the viewer’s attention to the fact that qualifying in an entrance is not the ultimate goal; there are things far bigger which an aspiring student might be too close to the picture to figure out. However, the film falls short of finding an adequate example to drive its point home. Using cancer as an inherent part of the plot, it further reinforces the stigma around the disease. While the narrative around cancer is changing to remind people that it’s not a death sentence, but something that can be tackled with the right efforts and awareness, the short film undercuts the argument by the manner in which it handles it.
Read LessThe short film attempts to raise all of these questions and tries to draw the viewer’s attention to the fact that qualifying in an entrance is not the ultimate goal; there are things far bigger which an aspiring student might be too close to the picture to figure out. However, the film falls short of finding an adequate example to drive its point home. Using cancer as an inherent part of the plot, it further reinforces the stigma around the disease. While the narrative around cancer is changing to remind people that it’s not a death sentence, but something that can be tackled with the right efforts and awareness, the short film undercuts the argument by the manner in which it handles it.
