Debutant director Mehran Amrohi’s Chidiya which finally gets an all-India release May 30 after travelling to several national and international festival, is a rare film about the mind of children that doesn’t talk down to them.
Usually, we either have films with children as protagonists that are patronizing in tone: the cinematic equivalent of lisp-talking to children and pinching their cheeks.
Or we have children in our films, who behave as if they have been cloned from an app: bratty, all-knowing eye-rollers.
Chidiya does none of this. Its innocence is daunting. Amrohi inhabits the child’s psyche unconditionally. There is no attempt to prod the plot into pointed productivity or manipulate the impressionable minds. The two child actors Svar Kamble and Ayush Pathak don’t behave like actors. Neither does the exquisite adult cast.
It has taken Amrohi a while to get here.
Says Shabana Azmi, who resolutely champions the cause of cinema for children, “There is no proper culture of cinema for children in India. We have had some fine films exploring the impressionable mind in the past such as Satyajit Ray’s Piku’s Diary and Vishal Bhardwaj’s The Blue Umbrella. But those are just not enough. Any film that sees the world through the child’s eye is most welcome.”
