There is nothing in the world that can prepare one for the brilliantly disturbing allure of Aamis,
except for reviews that are never quite sure how much of the plot they should discuss. It is a
futile exercise, and one that can take away from the experience, especially for a film that
provides so much thematic meat to devour that makes film theorists salivating in the theatre a common sight. No
one reads M Night Shyamalan films’ reviews for the plot or the premise, they read them to see if
it works. And Aamis works like a charm. 

It follows Nirmali (Lima Das), a married paediatrician stuck in the lonely monotony of her daily life
with a husband who is more often away than in town, and a young PhD student Sumon (Arghadeep Baruah) who is an unusual food enthusiast (his research paper is on meat eating
habits of North-East India). Meat plays a bigger role in the film than one would think. In fact, the
two people bond over their love for unusual meat dishes, and they are more enamoured than in
love at the beginning. Nirmali is taken by Sumon’s youthful passion for life, he falls for her
grace and kindness. 

<h2>Illicit love has always been a taboo in Indian films, and surely, Aamis explores it at its purest.
Bhaskar Hazarika deprives his lovers of the sensuality of touch. </h2> He takes the physicality of a
relationship out of the picture and replaces it with love flowing with sexual undercurrents. It
allows for parallels to classic tales of love, those of Heer and Ranjha, Shirin and Farhad. Perhaps their
embraces felt so euphoric to them because they spent years fantasizing for a simple touch.

 
Das is mesmerising as a conflicted woman, constantly aware of the guilt and taboo of her
situation. She is sensual, gracious and deprived, at the same point, of time. Baruah’s constant
cluelessness works for the character of a hopeless lover, who is hell-bent on doing anything to
please his lover. However, their love is an unhealthy transaction, much like the many love stories of the legends. 
 
Hazarika explores the ebbs and flows of their growing love in a nuanced manner. The
audience barely realises when the story takes a dark turn - where it hits the point of no return. By then the story is too likeable to look away. 

The wonderful thematic elements of the first half lead to the dark absurdity of the second. There
is a postmodernist twist on everything that is established, and a brilliant movement of the narrative makes the film
ripe for analysis and multiple viewings. <h2> The characters quietly go insane together, crumbling
under the pressure of society, under the guilt that renders their relationship illicit. By the time it
ends, one can only look back and wonder how they got there. Yet everything makes sense. </h2>
The cinematography is experimental, and partakes of the gluttony of the couple as well as their
fantasies. The editing is euphoric, often piecing together linear and the fantastical with the same
thread, being completely subservient to the whims of the script. The colour red is used
sparingly in the beginning, while it grows and grows until it takes over in the latter half.
The experience itself is one of abject horror and curiosity combined. Ultimately the film
becomes a cautionary tale too - a parable of the things people can do for love. It might also just
be the greatest PETA ad ever made. 
Written by Nimish K Sharma

Aamis (Ravening) | Anurag Kashyap | Review

Yours Truly is a film that finds itself thrust under the genre of romance, as its 57-year-old
protagonist Mithi Kumar (Soni Razdan) quietly pines after a man she’s only ever heard, but never
seen. She hears his voice over the station speakers every day on her long commute to work, and
over the years, develops an ineffable connection and attraction to this invisible “announcer”. She
regularly writes him unreserved and intimate letters where she pours out as much of her heart as
she does of the deep, reflective musings about the world. She imagines him addressing her personally over
the speakers - teasing, chastising, and guiding her through her day-to-day activities. However, the
station announcer never writes her back, and his private messages in her fantasies are never
recreated in his public messages over the station’s speakers. 

<h2>The film only fits in the romance genre
by how prominently Mithi’s life lacks it. </h2>

The opening scene shows Mithi lying motionless in bed, as a train rushes by loudly outside her
window. This is a predecessor for much of the film to come – the world moves along at a pace not in
sync with Mithi’s, while she remains stagnant, shielded under her gauzy mosquito nets, quiet teas
with biscuits, lonely train rides, and long nights of listening to her loud neighbours in bed while
craving the touch of her faceless man. It is an empathetic exploration of loneliness – a loneliness that

clearly weighs heavily on the protagonist – but a weight she doesn’t seem to mind. 

 She makes no
effort to rectify her isolation. She refuses to reciprocate her tenant, Vijay’s (Pankaj Tripathi),
forthcoming behaviour and attempts at conversation; she doesn’t try to seek out and meet the
“announcer” during the many years of being infatuated with him; she doesn’t seem to own a
television set or laptop; even after her vivacious younger sister, Lali (Aahana Kumra), presents her
with a new phone, Mithi doesn’t feel the need to use it to relieve the loneliness of her long, daily
commute on the train and ferry, where everyone around her is mindlessly scrolling through their
phones or listening to music to pass the time. 

<h2>Mithi seems to be living in a hangover from a fantasy world that she wishes existed – a world that is
not obsessed with gadgets, where a woman doesn’t have to be alienated in her workplace from all
her male colleagues, and where love letters are not only written, but also reciprocated. </h2>

There is a scene in the film where Mithi looks on at a dead body being transported on the train. As a
jolt displaces the sheet covering the body, revealing the corpse’s face, Mithi immediately gets up to
cover the body with her newly purchased quilt – an act of pure kindness, if it hadn’t been for the
look of paralysing fear in Mithi’s eyes when staring at the corpse’s face. It is unclear whether she
struggles to sleep that night because of being exposed to the cold without a quilt, or because of the
memory of why she doesn’t have one in the first place. 

Perhaps she’s afraid of how the dead body symbolises her future; perhaps she’s even more afraid of
how the scene resembles her present. Whether it be familiarity, or fear of 
the future, the emotion in Mithi’s eyes when she looks at the corpse is one perhaps also reflected in the viewer as we
watch Mithi’s life, love, and loneliness unfold in all its comfortable silences and disconcerting
mundanity on-screen.

 
Written by Sanjana Bhagwat

Yours Truly | Soni Razdan, Pankaj Tripathi, Aahana Kumra | Review

The short film is sharp, unexpected and embellished by a wonderful performance by Tisca Chopra. It takes the viewer into the all too familiar reality of a long marriage now afflicted by the husband's infidelity. While the children protest and blame their mother of inaction, looks like she has finally made up her mind to take charge. The confrontation scene between the two women is a smoothly scripted crux which is surprising, entertaining and delivers everything that the title of the film promises. With a subtle comment on gender, male entitlement and dual-standards, Chhuri will show you how cheating can often turn out to be a double-edged sword.

Chhuri | Short Film of the Day

The soulful music is backed by the most heartwarming visuals in this video. It's simple and straight and does not try to be anything it's not which is perhaps what makes it a successful product, hitting just the right chords with the viewer. It's a wonderful comment on how society marginalises everything that it doesn't understand, no matter how baseless its fears and apprehensions might be. It also shows that the warmth of love is sufficient to melt all barriers, irrespective of how strong they might be. The video employs an expert use of limited space and frames to tell its story. Not only is the manner of storytelling convincing, but it also succeeds in making Sage a wholesome piece of art.

Ritviz - Sage | Short Film of the Day

The film is marked by its silences more than dialogues, and in the process, offers a calm narrative - poignant, beautiful and engaging in equal measure. It is the story of a young writer who takes on petty jobs to help himself survive in the city, while continuing to scribble on his little notepad in between the dozens of chores he has to accomplish on a daily basis. One morning, stumbling across a pretty stranger, who seems to be reading the same poetry early in the morning he had fallen asleep to the previous night, he finds himself falling prey to a fluttering of the heart. The quietness of the film, also enriched by elegant camerawork, is broken only by a skilled voiceover that shares poetry about the matters of the heart. The things that are left unsaid carry the most crucial message in the narrative - one about an artist who finds himself at the margins of society, finding solace in a vast expanse marked only by a soul akin to his own kind, about falling in love and getting your heart broken. However, despite any or all obstacles, the pursuit of dreams, and hope, never truly ceases or loses its significance in human existence, and it is precisely this emphatic communication that becomes the final message that smoothly ties the conclusion together.

Roznama | Short Film of the Day

The story of Falana Dhimkana is of three different pairs of people and their individual struggles. The narrative is an exploration of the less significant moments of life, those which fall between the cracks of milestones and landmark achievements. The style of the film adopts the most natural flow and offers a beautiful portrayal of several things - from union and partings to hardships and most universal of them all, pain. The film comes across as a wise decision by the young filmmaker Prannoy Mehta to talk about concerns no grander than heartbreak, financial trouble and raw, honest intimacy between two people. All of this is gracefully weaved together with the stories of its characters, rendered convincingly by the actors. Falana Dhimkana is subtle, soft, and a reminder that irrespective of where we may be in life, pain finds us all in the end, but so does hope, happiness and joy.

Falana Dhimkana | Short Film of the Day

The main body and drama of Dusk comes to last between the few hours of late afternoon and twilight. Marked by the sound of azaan for Asr and Maghrib, two out of the five Muslim prayer times in a day, the plot takes its time coming into its own. However, this in no way implies a heavy narrative that cannot hold the viewer’s interest. On the contrary, after a powerful opening, achieved intelligently by simply using sounds against the unrelated visuals of a pimp smoking a cigarette or languidly occupying himself on his phone as one of his clients busies himself with a prostitute, the film makes it clear that its story is already fully-formed. It engrosses the viewer deeply and does so in its simple, quiet manner devoid completely of any ostentation or obtrusive tools. The storytelling is quiet, but strong in the comment it wants to make. It is nothing, but simply about a few hours one evening in the life of a young woman who may not have everything going right for her, to say the least. Yet she has managed to secure a precarious, and perhaps brief, calm surrender and peace for herself.

Dusk | Short Film of the Day

At first glance, Bittu is confident, endearing, and entertaining. The viewer is already taken by her from the get-go which is why even though her reality is revealed to be quite different from this, we do not stop rooting for her. If at all, our support becomes firmer. 

The protagonist has a stammer, a characteristic that costs her greatly within the arranged marriage market. The narrative does an efficient job of portraying her battles in a film that remains consistent with the effervescence it had opened with, irrespective of the change of tonality, as well as the core of the subject matter, which has become darker and heavier by now. It does not weigh itself down with melodrama and, in the process, manages to communicate an entire spectrum of emotions with ease. 


The film becomes a beautiful exploration of the many nuances and dynamics that form Bittu’s life and familial relationships, including an ever-loving father, a concerned mother, and an unexpected knock of love at the doorstep. The chemistry between the actors aids the endeavor further, ensuring that the end result delivers on its promises of presenting romance, drama, and some more, to the viewer.

Bittu | Short Film of the Month

Afterglow attempts a poignant engagement with grief and bereavement, and succeeds at it beautifully. The story is of a Parsi widow dealing with the emptiness and sorrow left in the wake of her husband's death. This national award winning film weaves together the loss of the present and the fond memories of the past in an effortless manner. It tugs at the heartstrings of the viewer by subtly delineating the wife's struggle with the didactic nature of rites and rituals, as well as the hollow condolences of others. It further offers a touching portrayal of a couple waging a losing battle against a chronic disease, acceptance and the eventual letting go of pain to heal and recover.

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