March 05, 2015, Mumbai: Brand Consultant and Ad-man Mihir Upadhyay’s debut film, “Happy Raksha Bandhan”, screened at the DFW South Asian Film Festival, 2015 as the official entry opened to a grand reception. A hard-hitting film on violence against women, it won acclaim from both critics as well as popular audiences.
“In the recent past, there have been gruesome and unsettling accounts of rape in our country. Being a son, brother, husband, friend, employer and a citizen, I felt a strong urge to voice my opinion on the subject. I did not want to merely highlight the issue but also present a possible solution. That’s when it occurred to me that if I made a film where the majority of India could see women as someone’s sister, daughter or mother, they would take upon themselves the responsibility of preventing gender violations. And to strengthen the identification, Raksha Bandhan was used as the thematic backdrop of the film,” says Mr. Mihir Upadhyay, Director.
The one minute short film, Happy Raksha Bandhan does not have actors, dialoguesor even voice overs. Yet, it is powerfully evocative and at times scream at the viewer. “Initially, the film was planned with actors but upon more thinking it occurred to me that for a good film I shall need good performers. Good performers live the life of the characters in their head & heart; this is when I realized that all the women cast in the film shall have to play the victim in their heads. This may cause some emotional suffering for them which I thought would defeat the purpose of this film. Hence I decided to make a film without actors,” says Mr. Upadhyay.
Happy Raksha Bandhan will be released through YouTube and the social media. Conceived and directed by Mihir Upadhyay, the film is produced by Golden Medias and edited by
Arvind Pathak.
