Film director Ankush Bhatt-produced short film, Sparsh, will go live on Large Short Films on 6th March. “It is an interesting story about how our prejudices towards others really spoil things. We tend to judge wrongly, which leads to problems. Ideally, we should always listen to both sides before jumping to conclusions,” says Ankush to IWMBuzz.
“The casting is spot on with talent powerhouse Kaykay Menon, Pooja Gupta, Prashant Narayanan and well-known TV name, Mishal Raheja. Kaykay plays a police officer who is out to investigate a crime. I will not say more; better you watch it for yourself,” says Ankush, who has done films like Bhindi Bazaar and Mumbai Mirror.
Ankush accepts that it has been some time that he had made the film. “We had submitted it to the above OTT platform a while back. Guess they wanted it to get critical acclaim by screening it at various film festivals. Maybe they feel now is the right time to go live. This decision is not in my hands.”
Talking about the short film format, Ankush, who is making 2 web series, says the biggest challenge in a short is that you have to tell your entire story in 15-20 minutes. “But you also shoot it like a film and not like other mediums like TV. On the positive side, it is a more story-driven format as opposed to star-driven feature films. If you cast good actors, you can make a good product without really bothering about Box Office collections.”
Going on, he says, “Shorts are a growing market with many OTT players hungry for content if you make good engaging stories. But yes, budgets are still an issue as there is a general perception that shorts are always made on a shoe-string budget, which is not always the case.”
“I am now working on my above web series and once they are done, I will start looking at films again.” His last completed project, Teen Dev, is still awaiting release.
