Chhoti Moti Batein: The Dark Side of Life

While the elder sister, Anuradha, passed away a few days later, Shonali was rehabilitated after treatment. For Dasgupta, the fact that the two sisters could lose the will to live and give up, left a profound impact. “I was haunted after reading the newspaper reports about the incident. And started thinking on how to explore this subject for a film. I wanted to explore what made them reject the outer world,” says the 34-year-old Kolkata-based filmmaker.

Filmmaker Sohini Dasgupta

Chhoti Moti Batein stars Khulbhushan Kharbanda, Tannishtha Chatterjee and National Award-winning actor from Bengali cinema Ananya Chatterjee. The story revolves around the two sisters and how they struggle to live after their father’s passing. The setting of the film is meant to recreate the mood of deterioration as peeling plaster on the walls and creepers growing within the house walls reflects upon the isolation and loneliness in the sisters’ lives. “Once they shut themselves in the house, the geography of the flat starts changing. The sisters discover stories about their father and a few days later they start discovering different parts of their house,” says Dasgupta.

An assistant to filmmaker Budhadeb Dasgupta for over a decade, Sohini has worked on some of his projects such as Swapner Din (Chased by Dreams), Kal Purush, The Voyeurs and was recently the associate director for Anwar ka Ajab Kissa, starring actor Nawazuddin Siddique. A graduate from the Film and Television Institute of Pune, Dasgupta had been trying for some time to develop her own scripts before stumbling on the story of the two sisters in a newspaper. “I read a few reports about the case and tried to reach out to the girl’s brother. But I was clear about not to make a film that is a retelling of the incident. So, using the girls’ premise, the film has an imaginative set up,” she says.