Starring: Anuradha Tandon, Sanjeev Vatsa, Asif Basra and Ritu Kambow Story and Screenplay: Sunil Bhatia, Rahuk Chowdhary Sound Design: Baylon Fonseca Editor: Anand Subaya Art Director: Yunus Pathan Graphics: Prashalee Director of Photography: Vushnu Rao Background Music: Nishadh Line Producer: Avinash Chowgule Executive Producer: Shweta S Produced by: Ashok Holla, Jayesh Chheda Production Company: On the Edge Films Directed by: Sunil Bhatia 35mm 14 minutes, Colour

Synopsis

The setting is Bombay, a city of opportunities. Opportunity lies in making it big in the glamorous world of Bollywood. Here transcend many personalities of different shades and colours. People have numerous deceptive faces here. This film explores these insecure and multiple faces exposing their intentions. One such personality is Natasha AKA Nats. Living with her since two years is Simi, a young aspiring actress. They have shared an amicable relationship but it has reached a high point. Things are getting nowhere for the young wannabe star. A fine Sunday evening, where Akash enters the action after twelve years. He is an old friend of Nats and is visiting her for three days. What follows an intense drama between three personalities reflecting upon there past lives and introspecting their future. A real time conversation that leads to an interesting but shocking climax.

This film, my second short film, happens to be another in the line of shorts that I desired to have Bombay as the cenral focus. My first short Connected too was set in Bombay and it was city madness that took centre-stage in the film.

The first short is never easy to make, but when it's done one is elated and I can now look forward to the big adventure of making a movie. While I was developing my film script, it so happened that Movielabs(a lab processing house in Bombay) in conjunction with Kodak wanted to make a short on Super 16mm so this short actually was co incidental.

What was to be a quick short took me nearly 8 months to complete due to circumstances that every short film in India have to go through. It has become virtually part of the whole process - getting friends as actors, technicians on less or no wages, making use of favours wherever one can. However since Kodak and Movielabs have been in the business for so long one did find it easier to gather a lot of favours from friends and wellwishers.

More about the film. What began as an experience while meeting people in Bollywood gave birth to this germ. People here have two faces and they change colors to the type of people they meet. It may be true for anyone in any business, but much more accurate and identifiable in Bollywood.

Of late Bollywood has seen lots of change in its functioning with more organised and legitimate money coming into the market. But in the past there was a period where a lot of unconventional funding i.e. underworld money was involved in the making of movies and of course the industry has always been a man's world. But I was intrigued that what if I were to explore a woman involved in this business? This train of thought struck me since women are involved in each and every businesses these days. Thus the character of Natasha came into my mind who apart from being a typical page 3 socialite, is also involved in this dirty business, a fixer who can arrange anything for a cost. I decided then for the whole story to revolve around this central character.

While shooting the film, I decided to have a very casual feel to the real time conversation and for this I insisted on live sync sound which turned out to be a good decision - the sound was of superior quality though the budgets got a bit inflated. Well worth it though since dubbing can never achieve quite the same effect as sync sound.

In the midst of this I had to abandon my feature film development for a while to get this baby going. Mentally I feel you are never ready to abandon one child in his development for another one in the making. I felt the same way too. My priority was to complete what was in hand and then go off to another one.

It was a great grooming exercise in a way for the big thing…That First Movie!

Say it Isn't So... is Sunil Bhatia 's second independent short film. He is an independent filmmaker and makes his living of music videos,ad commercials. His first short Connected which he co-directed was invited to nearly a dozen film festivals across the globe including the London International Film Festival and The San Francisco Asian American Film Fest. The film also won the best film in the short film category at the Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary and Shorts, 2002. Bhatia has also been actively involved in trying to create awareness for short films in the Indian film circuit