RAD REVIEW: SONSI at NYIFF 2021!

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What would be a world of exchanges between TIME and SPACE as living beings ?

Such an embodiment of exchanges of its characters is what Sonsi is about. A world that pedals on a man’s history of stealing the clock hand of a watchtower in the gone by lore, who has now become a time-maker to regulate the time of the entire town. Although the film has two other subplots that are screened and intermittently narrated by Rasika Duggal — who we can perceive as an older version of the 8-year-old girl Nadi, the film primarily revolves around the arrival of time or the time-maker. The film is directed by Savita Singh, a graduated from FTII who has also contributed as an impeccable director of photography for this film. This film went on to win the

national award for cinematography.

We are introduced with Nadi in the opening scene of the film, sleeping on her bed. And in a distant place, an old man dressed up with a coat and a dhoti along with an umbrella enters the town. The narrator makes us aware of the character that Ghadi wale Baba runs the time of his own. Long back, as ancestors had witnessed, the then ordinary man stole a piece of clock from the clock tower and sunk it in the river. Due to this, the town couldn’t wake up that morning, thus losing the time. There and then, the people of town come up with a collective decision of making him the time-bearer of the town. So, when he would enter the town that is when the town would start functioning, as if time followed behind him.

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Nadi has a shadow bird named Sonsi to which she is often playful. But, one day after the time-maker had left after repairing the wall clock, Sonsi didn't appear. On the day of mending Nadi’s house’s wall clock, she uttered the truth of the time-maker of not having a shadow. The time-maker retaliates with the knowledge about Sonsi and anticipating to follow him down the line. Nadi starts imagining the never-told-anyone truth in perplexing. And the next day she couldn't find her shadow. She embarks into deep forests looking for her to end up in the time maker's place. On reaching inside, she witnesses clocks and clocks and clocks all over, and on a journey to the cliff along with him asks the time-maker -

“Why did you steal parts of the clock from our wall clock?”

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To which he replies,

“I am making a clock to bring peace with time”

And some few shots later we see Nadi, yet again, sleeping on her bed; and on the arrival of the

time-maker as an alarm, she wakes up. And we see the screen gradually fade off. The most fascinating element of this short film is its cinematography contributing to every section of the story with sheer perfection. There are numerous aerial shots that add value to any particular scene, and there numerous long shots which interact with the characters directly.

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Every shot of the film makes it plausible enough that you would not take your eyes wandering even for a second, and could not even think of withering the cursor to see the remaining time of the film. The music by Tajdar Junaid will please your ears for its utter perfection as the story moves forward. And the sound designing and mixing handled by Ajit Singh Rathore and Anmol

Bhave shall make you feel every emotion, ambience, and environment of the film to induce and

stimulate the senses as purported. Sonsi, a tale of a shadow bird and a time-maker, is a short film that automatically and advertently calls your attention for twenty-five minutes of discovering

human personification of elemental entities this universe holds.

Production Company : Khan & Kumar

Director : Savita Singh

Producer : Sharib Khan, Vikas Kumar, Savita Singh

Cast : Aarohi Radhakrishnan, Jameel Khan

Story/Script : Savita Singh, Akanksha Arya

Cinematography : Savita Singh

Editor : Hemanti Sarkar

Music : Tajdar Junaid

Sound Design & Mixing : Ajit Singh Rathore

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