Do you remember the battle between the short films ‘Bob’ and ‘Kriti’ back in the summer of 2016? To remind you in one sentence, the Indian short film ‘Kriti’ which was directed by Shirish Kunder was claimed to have been copied from a Nepali short film ‘Bob’ which was written & directed by our Nepali young talent ‘Aneel Neupane’.
Well, why am I bringing this case up here? Because, as much as the short film ‘Bob’ was mind-blowing, the man behind it, Mr. Neupane is again back with yet another masterpiece. Aneel Neupane’s new short film Thirsty is worth watching.
Thirsty | A Short Film by Aneel Neupane:
Aneel Neupane’s new short film, Thirsty featuring Saruk Tamrakar, one of the actors from Nepal movie industry and Kundoon Shakya, a new face in the industry packed with potentialities, was released through the YouTube Channel ‘Jazz Productions’ on 2nd April 2020.
The movie is shot in the wild forest of some hills of Nepal – wet by the monsoon rain and almost invisible because of the extreme fog. The kind of the landscape, the gloomy weather and on top of that the song, “parkhi basey aaula bhani….”, playing in the background make the starting of the movie so thrilling that it compels a viewer to imagine and expect something spooky to happen. And, no wonder it meets the expectation quite well.
It’s all about two boys trekking through the hills taking shortcut. One of them is going abroad – he talks about how frustrated youths are here in Nepal. Whereas, another opposes by showing the opportunities available and mentions that going abroad is a wrong choice. They keep having such talks while they walk through the forest……until something spine-chilling happens.
The whole crew seems to have worked so hard to come up with such a great story, shoot in such a challenging site and climate followed by the most painful task, post-production. The smooth cinematography by Srijan Prajapati, the perfect sound design by Aman Karna, suitabe makeup by Sunii Magar and the stunning OST by Phosphenes. The sound track ‘scintillating lights’ is one of the best things of this movie; kudos to the band.
“Scintillating lights covering me, whispers of the woods inherently, my inner self glows tenderly, scintillating lights inherently”
– lines from the OST by Phosphenes
The writer/director, Aneel Neupane says, “What I’ve realized now is, if this small crew with ten members can come up with such a 15 min. long short film with limited resources, then, with better equipment, more people and proper funding we are ready to work as hard as thousand times than this for a 90 min. long feature film.”
Well, good luck to Mr. Neupane. We would like to see such talent in Nepali movie industry coming up with feature films that actually interests today’s youths.
On 12th Decembr 2019, Thirsty was also successfully premiered at Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF).
Watch the full movie below:
If you are into film-making or if you have time, then do watch the below behind the scenes video. It’s as good as the movie. Trust me.
Read other such review posts Here.
