How lead artistes' growing height and falling teeth posed a challenge for Pipsi makers

Child artiste Sahil Joshi received a lot of acclaim in director Makarand Mane’s Ringan: The Quest (2017). The film's producers, Vidhi Kasliwal’s Landmarc Films, considered him for one of the leads in their production, Pipsi. But there was one problem.

“We had done Ringan in 2015. After that, we felt he is perfect for Balu. But he was already in the sixth standard, whereas we wanted to show the character as being in the third standard,” said Kasliwal during the unusual trailer launch of the film at the Holy Family school in Andheri, Mumbai.

Fortunately for Kasliwal, that proved to be not such a big problem after all. “After meeting him we realized that luckily he wasn’t so tall,” she explained. 

However, the filmmakers faced a different problem when there was a gap in the shooting schedule. Not only did Joshi grow taller, his co-star Maithili Patwardhan’s appearance also underwent a change.

“There came a gap of a year," said Kasliwal. "So he [Sahil] became taller and her [Maithili's] front teeth fell out. We thought, what to do now? We gave him loose clothes and did other things [to make him appear shorter]. And we got fake teeth for her so that it appears the same.”

Speaking about the unusual title, first-time director Rohan Deshpande said, “The village where the story takes place does not receive rainfall. There is hardly any water to drink. But cold drinks are easily available. The two characters like drinking a product named Pipsi. It is a fake version of Pepsi. You find products with weird names in villages. They change one letter and make it appear similar to the real product.”

Pipsi will be released on 27 July.