Three best friends took their love for films a giant step further and decided to make movies themselves! The three youngsters from Margao, Bipin Khedekar, Sarvesh Naik and Deep Sawant, are making Goa proud as their second film, ‘The Guest’, has been selected for the 4th Pune Short Film Festival 2014.
‘The Guest’ has been directed by Bipin while Sarvesh is the screenplay writer and Deep, the Director of Photography. “The film is a suspense thriller about how a guest enters a home in the middle of a rainy night and creates confusion over a murder mystery. We had a team of 32 people working on the film,” says Bipin, who has already won the Best Director award for this film in three states – Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa.
“We strictly have a Goan crew as there is so much of talent in our state. The film has been produced by Sandip Nigalye who encourages youngsters to be part of the creative process,” he adds. The short film of 42 minutes durations stars Rajdeep Naik, Anil Raikar, Sohan Borcar,
Milan Vaingankar and Sarvadnya Patil. The Assistant Director for the film is Barkha Naik and music is by Mukesh Ghatwal. Deep Sawant is a third year student of Applied Arts at Goa College of Art, who had an amazing experience working on the film. “The film was released at the
Marathi Film Festival in Goa in June and since then, has been highly appreciated. Since the budget of the film was very low, I had to use creative shots to make it look interesting. Art direction for the film has been done by Sagar Gaude, a professor from Goa College of Art and
Shrey Sawant,” says Deep, who shares a brotherly bond with Bipin and Sarvesh.
“The film will be featured at the Pune Short Film Festival along with entries from countries like UK, USA and Germany. We tried new things in the film, like for the lightning effect, we used welding machines; sprinklers were used all over the house for the rains and we created the night ambience in bright sunlight,” says Bipin. Speaking about the story, Sarvesh feels that storylines can be adjusted even on the day of the shoot
to make it more realistic. “We wanted to preserve the
golden era. However, we realised that today’s generation
would not be able to connect with the film. The story is
the heart of the film so we would have discussions every
evening on what is best suitable for the screenplay.”
Unfortunately, even though the film is receiving
credit from the neighbouring states, ‘The Guest’ will
not be featured in the short film Goan category at the
International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. “The
entry for the Goan category for short films was opened
for just five days from October 15 to 20, 2014. We
applied for the entry on October 17 but we were told
that the film requires a censorship certificate. Everyone
in the film industry knows that a censorship certificate
requires at least six months. The entry was rejected and
according to the information I received, I doubt there are
any Goan short films which will be featured at IFFI. This is
not encouraging for Goan film makers,” says Bipin.
To conclude, Deep adds, “Whatever success this
film is getting and will get in the future, the entire
credit goes to the whole team of ‘The Guest’. Hats off
to their hard work.
