Film on emotional abuse flies high
A short film produced by UAE’s Sasha John is the toast of the film festival circuit
It’s not often that a film which touches upon the subtle emotional abuse of women in Indian homes and the lasting scars it leaves behind on a survivor is made and becomes the toast of film festivals.
Sasha John, a UAEbased filmmaker who recently graduated from Columbia University in New York and attended primary school in Dubai, has gone out on a limb here and backed Everything Is Fine,a short film about silent abuse.
It is a poignant portrait of a harried mother attempting to tell her independent daughter of her patriarchal marriage with her father. His snide remarks and constant gaslighting erodes the
mother’s self-worth on a daily basis,. Everything Is Fine,
starring Seema Bhargava
Pahwa (Ankhon Dekhi, Dum Lagake Haisha, Ferrari Ki Sawaari) and the National Award-winning Palomi Ghosh (Dance to the Rhythm, Mukti Bhavan/Hotel Salvation),
premiered at the New York Indian Film Festival on May 10 after its successful outing at the Brussels Short Film Festival, where it won the Best Film in the Next Generation International category. It packs quite a punch.
So what prompted the 26-year-old to be a part of this project, which was headed by a cast and crew that was mostly women?
“When you read a script like that, you get reminded of women from your own family and the story resonates with you on a personal level … This kind of subtle oppression of women in their own homes by members of their own family is a part of our culture,” said
John in an interview over the phone from New York. At every screening, viewers invariably came up to them and told them that the deeply personal tale reminded them of someone they knew in their lives.
Directed by Mansi Nirmal Jain (who studied with John at Columbia), Everything Is Fine is set in Delhi and chronicles the vacation of a set of middle-class Indian parents who visit their daughter. While the short film was primarily financed by the Katharina Otto Bernstein Production Grant, which was awarded to the film in 2015, the team is now working on a full-length feature around the same plot. Casting is yet to be decided, but it’s going to be a ‘dramedy’ set in New York.