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Director’s Statement:
A children’s film in India, by default, necessarily means that the film either has a magic element in it or an adventure aspect to it. The possibility is to go beyond…
The children in my film have discussions and dialogues through which they want to get themselves heard. The subject matter of the film itself is that they are in a conversation. Creating cinema out of this is the challenge.
Alcoholism, the prominent issue the children in the film have apparently raised, for me, is a pretext to deal with the issue of children’s right to self governance and the apathy we adults have towards it.
Shot in nineteen days in villages near Dharwad in Karnataka, South India, this film has local theater artists playing lead roles. These are men and women who own grocery shops; run auto-rickshaws; announce news on local radio or who are bill-board artists, computer graphic experts, environmental activists or even teachers in schools.
A three day pre-shooting workshop with the child artists, all new to the medium, ensured that they get acclimatized with the camera. By the tenth day of the shoot, they were all one-take artists!
The film that has shaped up is more or less similar to what I had in my mind – a pleasant rarity!
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