“VROOM, vroom, teen. toon, teen, toon”. Manu held on to a broken bicycle handle tied to a torn sari, the other end of which was held by his friend as they pretended to ride a motorbike. The audience laughed and applauded, as Rahul Koli came alive on the screen as Manu and the theatres in Gujarat opened to Chhello Show, India’s only Oscar entry, Friday. Rahul Koli, the 10-year-old child actor who plays the character of Manu, passed away due to cancer around two weeks ago. Director of the film, Nalin Pandya aka Pan Nalin, watched the first show of the semi-autobiographical film in Ahmedabad along with the child actors — Bhavin Rabari who plays the lead role of Samay, Kishan Parmar, who plays “ST” and Vijay Mer (as Tiku) as well as producer Dheer Momaya. The family of Rahul Koli was not present at the event. Nalin told The Indian Express, “I personally miss Rahul a lot. Tomorrow we will meet his family in Rajkot.” Minister of state for home Harsh Sanghavi who watched the premiere, said, “A Gujarati film going to places and being dubbed in different languages, is such a great achievement.” “I really enjoyed seeing myself in the film. This is the first time I saw the whole film,” said Bhavin Rabari who is from Jamnagar district. Bhavna Parmar, mother of Kishan Parmar who plays “ST”, had come all the way from Rajkot to watch their son on celluloid. “I felt great seeing my son on the screen,” said Bhavna. “When you have nothing, nothing can stop you.,” Nalin said, addressing a press conference in Ahmedabad Friday. According to Nalin, this is his first Gujarati feature film. “The idea of Chhello Show was born out of one of my visits to my father, 10 years ago in Amreli. We went to visit his friend, Mohammedbhai, who was ill at that time. He used to work as a projector operator in a cinema hall, and had lost his job as the cinemas went digital. I really wanted to know the life of a man who had spent his entire life with projectors and cinema. And there were ideas from my own childhood as well, when I used to bunk school and watch films.” “While making the film, I did not think that it would get nominated to the Oscars, I just made it for the audience to like the film, and the story to reach to them. We were invited to various premieres like in New York and received recognition and awards,” said Nalin. “All the awards and festivals are milestones in the journey. There was an opportunity to make the film in Hindi and cast actors from Bollywood. But Nalin was very particular about making the film in Gujarati and cast the actors who are most appropriate for the role,” said producer Momaya. “We were extremely excited when we got to know about the film’s entry to Oscars. But now is the responsibility to navigate the Oscar nominations,” said Nalin. Citing the difficulties faced during the shoot, including climate and risks of shooting near Sasan Gir, where there were threats of leopard attacks, Nalin said, “We were shooting with the kids who were non-actors. they were missing school. The most challenging was finding the lead actor for the character of Samay. Bhavin Rabari. We found him in Kathiawar. There was an incident where our cast director in Kathiawar was almost beaten up by a mob while searching for the child actor. A local school teacher came to the rescue.” “We started making the film in 2019, when we properly started shooting in Kathiawar. But the search for the cast took 6-7months. Then the (Covid) pandemic came, but we wrapped up the film just in time. Editing took time. we were discouraged given the pandemic. But then the vaccine came and we were encouraged to launch the film in 2021,” said Nalin. The director said the the movie was screened twice before where they received a good response. “We also took the film to the Gujarati International Film Festival in Atlanta,” he said. Regarding dubbing the film into various languages and the use of subtitles, Nalin said, “We found people who specialise in this. So we were able to do in different languages — English, German, etc,. But Chhello Show is majorly a visual film, a lot is conveyed visuallly, it is not a hard film that one needs to depend a lot on subtitles.”
