News

Is there anything more pure and less corrupt than young love? That first sensation that comes when boys and girls start transitioning into men and women is a powerful charge. The feeling is so often mutually felt but rarely expressed in as gentle and kind a way as the way observed in Sujay Dahake's beautifully observed Marathi film, Shala (School).Mukund Joshi (Anshuman Joshi) is a 14 year-old boy, and Shirodkar (Ketaki Mategaonkar) is his female classmate in rural India in the mid '70s. Theirs is that beautiful and pure puppy love that one often only experiences once. Love free from disappointment, free from baggage, and free from fear. Their courting is equally chaste; no touching, no kissing, for Joshi, a simple shared smile, or...

Director: Sujay Dahake, Story: Milind Bokil, Screenplay: Sujay Dahake, Actors: Dilip Prabhavalkar, Nandu Madhav, Anshuman Joshi, Ketaki Mategaonkar

The name can be misleading. Shala is not about kids going to school nor is it a children’s film, even remotely. All that it has in common with Stanley ka Dabba begins and ends at the animated sequence that plays with the opening credits. Shala takes you to the next level: while you are still at school and your friends are important, you step onto the threshold of the adult world and start making sense of it.

Based on a story by Milind Bokil, Shala is a ravishing debut feature by Sujay Dahake. It is an adolescent love story set in a small town in the politically charged decade of the 70s. In the backdrop, there is the fear of the Emergency on one side and the insinuation of rebellion in...