Prataya Saha on 1924 – The Kakori Project: ‘How children become a casualty in political conflicts’

Still from the film
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Bengaluru-based independent filmmaker, Prataya Saha’s ninth short film, 1924 – The Kakori Project, had its international premiere on the closing night of the Big Apple Film Festival in New York on December 12.

“The Big Apple Film Festival is one of the premier film festivals in the US in the independent film circuit,” says Prataya over call from Whitefiled. “They have a platform for shorts, feature films and screenplays. We are thrilled that 1924 – The Kakori Project was selected for the screening at the festival. One of our producers, Anshulika Kapoor, represented us in New York.”

Many of Prataya’s films have been screened at international film festivals and won awards. His Just Another Day (2021) won the Best Short film for against violence towards women in Turkey, Mein Mehmood (2022) won the Best Short Film at the Kolkata International Film Festival and the Best Cinematography award at Jaipur International Film Festival.

The challenges for short film makers are numerous, Prataya says, believing film festivals are perfect platforms to showcase shorts. “Short films do not have theatrical releases. Even streaming services do not take shorts. We have limited avenues to showcase our works. The maximum we can do is upload on YouTube or Vimeo.”

Writer-director, Prataya Saha
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

That is where festivals like the Big Apple Film Festival come in to fill the gap, Prataya says. “They are great launch pads for filmmakers like us, as we do not have a platform for shorts. It is in film festivals like this that we find a captive audience, who not only watch the film but also interacts with us.”

Prataya shares that 1924 – The Kakori Project was nominated for the Best Short film award. Large platforms also open doors for distributors across the globe, Prataya says. “Festivals like this come as a light at the end of the tunnel and game changer for us.”

Shorts are doing better today than they did five years ago. “Feature films now have cut down on their length from 140-minutes to 80 to 90 minutes. Even shows, which earlier had hour-long episodes have cut down to as little as 25 minutes. People’s attention span of people has come down and in the future shorts will get a chance to be monetised.”

Set against India’s independence struggle, 1924 – The Kakori Project explores the trauma of children in conflict, tackling moral dilemmas that still resonate today. The film, in Bengali and Hindi, is set in the winter of 1924 when a young man is recruited for a clandestine operation. He grapples with the moral complexities of the Indian Independence struggle, entwined with the haunting plight of children caught in conflict zones.

“In 1925 a group of nationalists captured a train in Kakori, near Lucknow,” Prataya says. “They captured some of the money that the British were looting out of India. This led to an uproar and was a huge turning point in the Indian freedom struggle. Forty people were hanged for this.”

The film, Prataya says, is a fictionalised account of this event. “The story is set a year before the Kakori incident, when the people were being recruited. The film explores the subtext of how children become a casualty in political conflicts.”

Prataya says he is looking at expanding the short into a full-fledged feature film. “The short, screened at this festival, also becomes a potential pitch to interested investors and distributors.”

One of the film’s producer, Anshulika Kapoor, in New York at the festival
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

India has a plethora of stories that are multicultural in nature, Prataya says. “It will take a filmmaker a lifetime to cover one percent of these stories. My endeavour is to choose stories that have not been picked by mainstream media and those that have a history and heritage.”

Prataya wrote the screenplay of 1924 – The Kakori Project, which was shot in Kolkata’s Ghats. “That is where the revolutionaries held clandestine meetings. We specifically looked for authentic locations untouched by globalisation. Since we worked with a small budget and could not create a place that looked like the 1920s with VFX, we were determined to find actual locales that matched the past.”

Produced by Poorva Bhat, Vijaykumar Mirchandani (executive producer), Manish Verma and Anshulika (associate producers), 1924 – The Kakori Project will premiere at the Nepal Human Rights International Film Festival powered by the United Nations Development Program later this month.