The 93rd Academy Awards has recently announced the shortlist of candidates for various categories. In a development that will be of great interest to Indian cinema lovers, Bittu, a short film inspired by the infamous school poisoning of 2013, has made the cut for the top ten films in the Short film-Live Action category.
Bittu tells the tragic story of a tragic Monday when two friends Bittu and Chand got separated. The director, Karishma Dev Dube has fictionalised the events that rolled after the incident in Bihar.
“I’m still pinching myself. We still have a month before we know if we’re nominated. We’re just shortlisted right now,” said Karishma.
Edited excerpts:
Q: What is Bittu about?
Karishma: It is about 23 children who unfortunately passed away after the tragic school poisoning incident in Bihar in 2013. The film at its heart centres around the friendship between two girls, more specifically Bittu- a 9-year-old girl who is perhaps many years ahead of her actual age and a little bit of individual in the hood. And on this day, her individuality is somehow punished, but also saves her in some sense.
Q: Your debut short film Devi has already been showcased in 58 festivals across the world and now Bittu has made it to the Oscars. Did you have any particular goal in mind while making Bittu?
Karishma: Not really. This was my thesis film at NYU. I just had a lot more time to develop it too. So I wanted to take my time in the writing process and find a story and write it in a way that felt very different.
I wanted to do something a little bit more elevated and ambitious. But you don’t have a goal when you’re thinking about making a movie. You just want to do it because you want to go back to the set and get back at it.
So any validation like this is really wonderful. When the world actually finds your work good and worthy of putting it on a platform, it means a lot.
Q: Bittu is based on true events. What prompted you to pick up this subject?
Karishma: I started writing it from a place of anger, like everybody else. Such incidents just shock you that we don’t put systems in place that can lead to such tragic events, but that was not enough for me.
I think what kept me going was the character of Bittu that I wanted to speak more about. I wanted her to come to life. She was in my subconscious for a long time. Ultimately the film has become a lot about my own experiences in boarding school and my relationship with authority, like attribute to my most formative friendships as well.
Q: The casting is also pretty unconventional. What factors helped you make your mind about the final cast?
Karishma: Casting was the most challenging part, but also kind of ended being the most organic part of this whole process.
I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want to utilize professional child actors because they have a sense of conditioning that I didn’t think would be effective for this film in the way that I was making it. I had a vision that I wanted the cast to really feel like they were from that place. I wanted to make sure that that authenticity was not questioned when people were watching the film.
The whole film is characterised on the back of a nine-year-old girl. And I just needed a girl who was not aware of the camera at all and could act as if no one was watching.
We conducted theatre workshops that served as auditions when we were working with bigger groups of children. I went to a couple of government schools in and around that area to look for this kid.
Q: Did you exercise your creative vision to the hilt in Bittu?
Karishma: I took a lot of liberty fictionally. I never wanted to make a documentary as I wasn’t covering a piece of news. I wanted to reimagine the incident to some sense.
I think somewhere down the line, in my own subconscious, I wanted to challenge the assumption that you think and have of a difficult narrative like this. I know there is a preconceived notion that tough narratives like this come from developing spaces in India, and I wanted to make a film that speaks against that. I wanted to make a film that is not sensationalising violence or tragedy.
Instead, I wanted to show that these people had dreams, ambitions, and relationships with each other and this thing can happen anywhere in the world. It was just a mundane act of carelessness. I wanted to do justice to these people without antagonizing any character in it.
Q: How did you get associated with Indian Women Rising?
Karishma: Very recently I’ve completed the film in 2019 and we’ve been trying to find it in the edit. So we’ve had a long journey of completing the movie and sending it out in the world. We were very lucky to win the Student Academy award last year in August. And that makes us eligible to submit the film for the Academy Awards.
So I started raising money for supporting us through this last leg of publicity. Somewhere down the line, my producer and my sister Shreya Dev Dube suggested why don’t we look for support in India. That’s when I got in touch with Guneet Monga.
The conversation was just about getting to know her experience and seeing if there’s a possibility. Somewhere in that conversation, she told me about her dream to create an avenue of funding for emerging filmmakers in India. That was cool to hear because I have made all my films through grants from institutions. I know the importance of this kind of institutional help. So I was very excited that something like that could be created and Bittu could help manifest that in any way.
We just very organically began this partnership where they have now come on board as executive producers to help us through the marketing and publicity leg of this phase of the film.
Q: Any upcoming projects?
Karishma: Right now I’m producing my first feature film for my friend and close collaborator, Mary Evangelista, who also produced Bittu. It’s a feature film called Burning Well. It takes place here in New York. We hope to shoot it at the end of this year. Besides that, I’m developing my own script that’s based in Assam and is somewhat inspired by my family over there.
