Child’s play

We all know him better as the director of blockbuster Dangal, the Aamir Khan-starrer that won critical acclaim as well as set the cash registers ringing. But at a special session centered on children’s films at the 48th edition of International Film Festival of India, Goa, Nitesh Tiwari, the director of  Chillar Party and Bhootnath Returns, emerged as a strong votary of children’s films, an otherwise much neglected genre. 

Among a bevy of questions about whether films on children are for children or the child in all of us or films like Taare Zameen Par, he shares how difficult it is to make films in India that has no stars per se. He recalls the days when he and Vikas Bahl wrote Chillar Party and approached many directors, all of whom refused to touch the project thus making them helm the project as its ‘reluctant directors’. The film later went on to win the National Award for Best Children’s film. Of course, while his latest film Dangal too has inspired the young generation, Chillar Party, he reveals, was made essentially with children in mind. Only he didn’t want to dumb down children, but treat them as evolved individuals; so all the children in the film had their own tracks, personalities and journeys. 

Learning curve

Why he even wrote a song Hum Toh Chup Ho Jaayenge keeping in mind the gnawing realization that children’s voice is often ignored and rarely heard. Whether too much exposure to cinema stifles children’s imagination or not, he does feel that digital explosion has to be rationed. “Books without doubt are children’s best friend and the day my father gifted me a bunch of books such as Sindbad the Sailor, my imagination knew no bounds.” He agreed with the moderator of the session, known lyricist and ad guru Prasoon Joshi, that gender sensitivity can be incorporated in children’s films. As a father of twins, a boy and a girl, he is acutely conscious of this inherent need. 

Future course

While he had no answer as to why other makers like Gulzar and Vishal Bhardwaj moved on from children’s films, he would continue to make similar films, “Only if the budget of the film is not decided by who stars in it.” Whether Indian audiences are waking up to films without stars… content for children is certainly looking up and also on the verge of being accepted globally. And as proof stands Netflix’s first original animated series titled Mighty Little Bheem, based on the Indian kids’ series Chota Bheem; so revealed Rajiv Chilaka founder of Green Gold Animations. Joshi’s claim that India can be a global powerhouse of children’s films might still be distant dream, but directors like Tiwari are clearly looking in that direction where children’s cinema speaks to them in a language they understand.

[email protected]