Anaar Daana in Pune: Arbhaat Short Film Club Screens Nishi Dugar's Berlinale Short, With the Director in Conversation
A film club is a modest institution. It asks for a room, a projector and an audience willing to sit together in the dark and then, crucially, to stay behind and talk.
That second part is where the Arbhaat Short Film Club places its emphasis.
The screening
For its second session, the club, run by Arbhaat Films, is screening Anaar Daana, a short film by Nishi Dugar. There are two screenings in Pune this weekend, at the Goethe-Institut Pune and at The Box.
The director will be present for an interactive session after the screening.
The film
Anaar Daana premiered at the Berlinale in 2024, in the Generation Kplus section, the festival's strand for films that speak to younger audiences without condescending to them.
The film is Dugar's debut, and she wrote, directed and produced it. It follows a young girl, Guddal, whose ordinary world is unsettled by a death in the family, and who must make sense of grief, and the unfamiliar rituals around it, alongside her siblings.
The title translates as Sour Candy, which is perhaps the most precise description of grief one could offer: something familiar, even sweet, that turns sharp without warning.
Why the conversation matters
Short films are often watched alone, on a laptop, between other things. A club screening changes that. It restores the short to a room and gives it the attention a feature would receive.
The director's presence matters for a second reason. A film about a child's grief raises questions that are best answered by the person who made it: how one directs young performers through difficult material, how much of the story is memory and how much invention, and why the short form suited it.
How to attend
Tickets can be booked through the link in Arbhaat Films' Instagram bio. Both screenings are this weekend, so readers in Pune have little time to decide.
For a wider view of the short film circuit, read our note on Interfilm Berlin, the 42nd International Short Film Festival.
This article is based on Arbhaat Films' announcement and published information about the film.
Kenneth Hopkins is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AltBollywood. Indofuturist, posthumanist and unapologetically Indocentric, he describes himself as an epimemeticist, a swaraji, a freakonomist, a lexicographer and a cartochronicler, mapping the ideas, words and quiet shifts that shape Indian entertainment. Follow him on Instagram at @kennethhopkins.
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