You Can Now Watch The Award Winning Indian Short ‘Syaahi’ Online

The 63rd National Awards were held in March 2016 and for 24-year-old director, Varun Tandon it marked a tremendous victory for his short film, Syaahi when he and his team were honoured with a Special Mention for Direction. This poignant coming of age tale of a young boy growing up in a quaint hilly town and the trials he goes through in his daily life made a lasting impression on critics who praised the film and called it a ‘conglomeration of sense and sensibilities depicted through the innocence of a young mind’. 

You can watch the full movie for yourself, here.

Tandon grew up in the city of Kaunaaj in Uttar Pradesh and from a young age was captivated by the arts. He followed this dream to Mumbai where he attended St. Xavier’s college to pursue his Bachelor’s degree in Mass Media. It was during his time there that he found his true passion for filmmaking. To build his knowledge he started making independent short films and by the end of his final year he had made a total of fifteen.This gave him a wide range of experiences and cemented his belief that this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. During this time he also formed close ties with a talented team of filmmakers, editor Amitesh Mukherjee and cinematographers Anubhav Syal and Yashveer Singh and they have worked together ever since.

Syaahi started off as a short story that celebrated the seemingly insignificant moments of childhood that stay with you and end up making a permanent impression. Tandon realised that everyone has experienced these small events and wanted to create a story that could touch a wide audience. Although it started out as a short story he soon knew that he wanted to make this into something he could share with more people ‘The story didn’t leave me. I knew we had to film this story and these characters’ says Tandon.

The story of the little boy is so nuanced and touching that you can’t help but wonder if Tandon lent some of his own memories to create the character. He agrees that subconsciously he may have imbued the role with his own personality and that ‘experiences or what you have seen or heard around you seep into your work’ but there was no intentional connect to his own childhood in the movie.

Their recent success at the National Film Awards came as wonderful surprise because although the whole crew worked relentlessly and so many people pitched in as co-producers they were all just driven by a love for the script. ‘We had no targets or aim other than to make the film as honestly and truthfully we can’ says Tandon. The film industry in India is such a challenging arena and sometimes even the most passionate people can lose hope but Tandon and his team were committed to the project and for around a year and a half they gave everything to see it through. Even when people started calling them mad for working on a short film that had no obvious destination they kept at it ‘We were doing it for the love of it. That’s it. Not many people saw any sense in that’. The recognition they got from the National Awards was the perfect reward for all their hard work, they are thrilled that this win will take Syaahi to new levels and a global audience.

There were many challenges that came with this project a lot of the shooting was with children and quite a few people who didn’t have experience with acting which meant working with them took up a considerable amount of time. That however was exactly what they lacked, time. They had a six day shooting schedule which left no time for reshoots and no room for error. They wanted to hit their mark without compromising on the visual integrity of the piece. Tandon credits director of photography Yashveer Singh and his unyielding work ethic for being able to wrap up the film on schedule and still have it turn out exactly as he had envisioned it.

Tandon’s favourite part of the experience is when people watch the film, and they come back to him a day or two later saying that the film sent them down the memory lane and start telling them their own childhood stories. ‘It means the film has touched a chord somewhere and it feels good to know that.’ The aim of Syaahi is to tell a story that will connect with its audience and have their own honest response. ‘They can take away what they want. There is no intention from our side to make a point or a give lesson other than tell a story.’

Tandon doesn’t know where his filmmaking career is headed after but he knows that this is only the beginning, he believes that to succeed you have to continuously do what you believes in and keep at it. His advice to people attempting to break into the gruelling world of film is simple, ‘There’s only one thing you need, the desire to make films, and being crazy enough to believe that you can do it.’

You can experience this heartwarming journey into childhood here.