A short film that Fearless’ly raises questions

Fear is one of the predominant emotions known to man. Our bodies take the familiar ‘fight-or-flight’ response when met with an unfavourable situation, and you don’t need much to prove this. Just picture yourself in a room with a stranger from a small town, with no way to contact the outside world.

The lead character in the short film ‘Fearless’, who is a female photographer from an upper class family, faces exactly the same situation. The movie was screened at Prasad Labs by its director Nishanti Evani. The 13-minute film contains enough suspense to make you nervous about what might happen next. The lead is played by Shaanti who stars in ‘Bombay Velvet’.

“The inspiration for this film came from an incident that I had personally experienced when I went to college in Chennai. So this project is very close to my heart,” says Nishanti Evani, director of ‘Fearless’. The film talks about conditioning and human psychology. The intention behind the film is to expose how cautious we try to be as we live our lives constantly anticipating bad to happen.

It encourages one to live less fearfully. “Nobody ever tells you bhai, thoda kum darke raho yaar. Why are we so scared of others? We ought to be friends with them and just enjoy life,” wonders Pramod. The film is additionally a depiction of how women in particular are taught to distrust the society and to be dubious of men. Women are justified for their attempts to protect themselves from many unfortunate incidents.

However, in light of the male-bashing which has become more common following many incidents of rapes and insensitive remarks on women, one wonders if we have been taught to be too suspicious of others. This leads to being quick to generalise all men and consider them to have hidden motives for their actions.

“The other day my friend was telling me, a girl was travelling by train and one guy called out to her and tapped her shoulder. The girl, petrified, turned around and slapped him across his face. Meanwhile, this guy just stood there holding her phone which she had dropped, intending to give it to her. Those are the kind of incidents you see around,” Pramod explains.

Nishanti further adds, “It is a layered concept because sometimes when you are nice to a guy, he does take advantage of you.” The film ends with a poem titled “Zahoor”, written by Pramod Sanghi. It expresses the plight of a man who feels rejected in this world.

On what was the most challenging part of the production, Nishanti says, “The slum shoot was very difficult. Shaanti who is of course very attractive drew a crowd of young kids around her.” Pramod then adds, “And no one took my autograph because they identified me as one among them.

That was a win point. Nishanti jokes that after seeing this film, women will probably think I am dangerous because of the role I played.”Pramod Sanghi and his team at the Rockstars Studio have an ambition to make 48 short films over the next four years.

On upcoming short films that are in the pipeline, Pramod and Nishanti, both originally from Hyderabad say there is a short film going to come soon called ‘Pinjara’. They reveal that it is going to star famous faces from the film industry of Mumbai. Nishanti will also be starring in a Telugu tongue-in-cheek film called ‘Naa Peru Prema’.

By:Elita Enoch