Abhiroop Basu’s short film Gudiya, starring Satakshi Nandy and Apeksha Singh, will be premiered at the Oscar-qualifying 46th Odense International Film Festival in Denmark. The film will compete with 123 films selected from 4,077 submissions from over 40 countries across the world.
In a Facebook post, the director of critically acclaimed short films Meal (2018) and Laali (2019), revealed that he shot the film on an iPhone with a crew of four in eight hours.
Speaking to The Telegraph, an English newspaper, Basu said he was inspired by the Dogme 95 filmmaking movement propounded by Danish filmmakers in 1995, which emphasized the traditional values of story, acting and theme without the use of elaborate special effects and technology.
“The idea of how to shoot the film came before the story. My thought was the camera is just a recording device, and I wanted to use an iPhone to make a film in a riveting fashion and keep the drama intact,” he said.
While shooting the film, there was only the actor and location and there was no production design involved.
According to Basu, an experience at Sonagachi, the red-light district of Kolkata, during the pandemic inspired him to make the film. During the time of crisis, a client revealed to him that 80% of the men preferred girls between the age of 9 and 14 as they are easy to dominate. “That statement came to me while I was thinking of the film. The title Gudiya comes from the fact that we all are being played in this game of the powerful vs the powerless.”