National Award-Winning Short Film "Dal Bhat": A Passion Project Turned Reality

In order to create the National Award-winning short fiction film "Dhal Bhat," director Nemil Shah worked with his classmates from a Mumbai-based film institute. Shah says the team's goal was to gain an understanding of the complexities of filmmaking through the project.

In "Dal Bhat," which revolves around a 10-year-old boy who is eager to swim in the freshly filled lake following a protracted drought, Shah worked with classmates Aditi Bohra, Vinayak Chhabra, Senain Sawant, Dharamraj Joshi, Mitali Solanki, and Rishab Joshi. He goes swimming despite his father's refusal to give him permission, which causes him to learn something about himself.

"Making films is a very useful subject. It consequently becomes challenging for someone to instruct you in a conventional academic manner. Thus, in order to comprehend how films are made, we had to create one," adds Shah.

Sawant, who worked with Shah, says they were aware that the finished product could be turned in as a graduate project, but they never imagined that their "passion project" would result in a National Award.

The timeliness of the film's completion and our graduation submissions coincided by happenstance. Sawant continues, "We later made the decision to submit the movie to the award selection committee.

First assistant director Chhabra claims that Shah came up with the story idea.

Shah claims that he has always been enthralled with both his grandfather's stories and the scenery of Saurashtra.

"I spent a large portion of my early years there, having been born there. When they were ten or twelve years old, my grandfather used to tell us stories about his early years. They would walk nearly ten kilometers just to swim since they had nowhere else to go,” Shah recalls.

Shah claims that these images planted the idea in his mind.

In this desolate setting, we wanted to do something with the water. That marked the beginning of the story. After that, we looked around. While exploring Saurashtra and Kutch, we came across this little village that was formerly home to only transgender people. It was an extremely interesting discovery. For a few days, we coexisted with them to gain insight into their daily lives. After that, everything fell into place, and we wrote the movie," Shah continues.

According to Sawant, the reason the group chose a fictional story over a documentary format was that they believed the story would have a greater impact if it was told from the perspective of a child and explored social taboos.

From our initial chat, I recall that Nemil expressed a desire to include a touch of innocence in the narrative. Our main character, Mukti, is a very young child who doesn't fully comprehend what's going on in his life. He's never received body education. Sawant says, "All he wants to do is go swim in the lake.

The movie also quietly examines the effects of belonging to the LGBTQ community in a tiny village as the youngster tries to understand why his father won't let him swim in the lake.

According to Chhabra, the friends are still in shock over their first-ever national award win.

It's truly amazing that so few people are fortunate enough to accomplish this at such a young age. However, I believe it also adds a feeling of pressure because everything you now produce could be compared to this. However, Chhabra continues, "Winning it is just a really, really nice feeling."

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