A still from Khilawadi (The One Who Plays), Shobhita Thakur’s award-winning film about a 12-year-old girl from Madhya Pradesh’s Banchhada community who dreams of becoming a doctor.
This Sept, when her 27-minute film Khilawadi (The One Who Plays), which follows the story of 12-year-old Sapna who dreams of becoming a doctor, won best short film at the Altyn Minbar Kazan International Film Festival in Russia, her beliefs were reinforced. After graduating from FTII in 2012, she worked in advertising and corporate films, and as an executive at Netflix, before making this film. It has also been selected to be screened at the 45th Cambridge International Film Festival on Oct 26 and 30.
Because their fathers’ names were not available, some told me they could not get caste certificates. Because they are not considered a significant part of the vote bank,” she said, for a small community that has little political visibility, even getting basic documentation can become a struggle. Khilawadi has also won awards at Canada’s FascinAsian Film Festival and Pune’s Buddha International Film Festival, and received recognition at Sweden’s Sama International Film Festival.
Thakur, an alumna of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), said the issue had long been close to her heart. So conversations about social inequality were always part of our lives,” she said. Had I been born into their families, or they been born into my family, things would have been very different,” she said. At a screening in Russia, one woman stood up and said the experience depicted in the film had happened to her.
Pune: Why should a girl’s future be determined by the caste she is born into? The question has remained with filmmaker Shobhita Thakur ever since she met girls from the Banchhada community in Madhya Pradesh. In the Banchhada community where girls face pressure to enter sex work, that dream is an act of defiance. “I come from Madhya Pradesh, from a scheduled caste family of social activists. “My father was a police officer. The difference between my life and these girls’ lives was stark. She spent two days in Neemuch getting to know girls and their families in the area. “We talked to the girls and listened to their stories. The film’s reception abroad has shown that the questions it raises extend beyond India. Audiences in Canada, Italy and France also responded to its themes.