Ashwin Kumar’s 15-minute film ‘Little Terrorist’ tells a poignant tale of a Pakistani boy who crosses the fence at the Indo-Pak border to get back his cricket ball.
The landmines around the cricket ball don’t deter the film’s little hero Jamal to crawl underneath the barbwires nor does the armed sentry perched atop the borderpost. Jamal snakes his way through the mines to his ball. And that is when the alarm goes off. The little hero is spotted and shots are fired. Jamal wets his salwar, looks helplessly at his friends across the barbed fence, and not knowing what to do, runs off into the nearest village where he takes shelter with a Brahmin named Bhola.
Beautifully
conceptualized, the story of ‘Little Terrorist’ is simple and yet it has many undercurrents. From one perspective, the movie shows the desensitized approach of security forces (who label Jamal as a ‘terrorist’), and from another, the movie shows the good in the hearts of common village folks through the character of Bhola.
The film has been shot very authentically and it convincingly recreates the setting required for the story.
‘Little Terrorist’ certainly stands a good chance of winning the Oscar.
