Shorted

The film is a fantastical engagement with a little boy’s grief and his iron resolve to ensure he finds a way back to his mother. While negotiating his fate with the sea, the mammothian entity that took his mother, our young protagonist is transported to a magical realm. Here, as he strikes a bargain with Lord Ganesha, the narrative comes into its own, using mythology and fantasy to talk of love, tragic loss, and the treacherous path that lies ahead of the little boy. 
The surreal realm, constructed entirely in Sanskrit and with meticulous care, is replete with metaphors and symbolism that demand the audience’s undivided attention to fully decipher and grasp their meaning. The film further employs a remarkable background score, alongside an originality of visual progression, both tied together seamlessly, to portray all of this and some more for the viewer.

The Eyes of Truth | Short Film Nominee

Crime, love gone sour, mythology, and a battle between demons and gods, all form integral parts of this carefully woven film. The narrative, though mainly confined to a single night and the seediness of its shadows, moves back and forth in time to construct the story of primarily three characters - a police officer, a disgruntled lover, and a man who is overwhelmed with financial tribulations. 

Adding to the intrigue is a fourth character, a woman, Mhalsa, who will come to alter the course of the narrative in an irrevocable, lasting manner. She enters the plot at a crucial juncture with a past that connects her to more than one man, a topic of intense discussion by all the men who surround her. 

The cop regales a nervous waiter with a mythological story that will present the most crucial metaphors of the film, ideas of right and wrong, and how more often than not they get reduced to a grey realm of blurred boundaries. A little distance away from him two friends await their third companion who arrives with a disturbing tale of his own. The two parties remain completely oblivious to the third where the man shares his woes with a confidant. 

Notwithstanding a few rough edges in terms of production, particularly in the department of sound, there is a smoothness with which all of these elements are eventually connected. The duration of the film allows it to spend enough time on each subset of the plot without losing pace. The writing becomes a notable aspect of the film, followed by the edit and performances, all of which together give rise to an engaging end result that displays sincerity and investment of thought.

Neelakanta Bar | Short Film Nominee

'Ashwatthama', a story of anger, helplessness and revenge, offers a world of metaphors. The narrative speaks of poetry, stars, and most important of all - a forest. The protagonist, Parikshit, is reeling with the loss of his father, snatched from him in a violent assassination. Battling the ensuing grief, he now feels like Ashwatthama from Mahabharata who was cursed with immortality and doomed to wander with an unhealed wound until the end of times. Parikshit too finds himself at the heart of a wild, dense forest of his thoughts, finding a physical representation in him wandering the banks of the Narmada river. The storytelling and the manner in which its many components are weaved together exhibit potential and should definitely be engaged with further.

Ashwatthama | Short Film Nominee

Central to the narrative of the film are philosophical underpinnings about the meaning of right and wrong, scruples and principles, and taking the correct decision no matter how difficult the choice might be. The same is explored by juxtaposing the ideas intrinsic to two adjacent time periods as defined by the Hindu mythology - the Kali Yuga and the Dvapara Yuga. Ahead of an imminent shoot, as a young actor prepares for his performance of Aswathama, a pivotal character in the Hindu epic Mahabharata who is cursed to a life of immortality, he is visited by the man himself. It is the ensuing conversation between them that then comes to form the essence of the plot.

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