BENGALURU: Independent filmmaker Prataya Saha’s latest, Mein, Mehmood (I Am Mehmood), which explores the sensitive topic of Southeast Asian Immigrants in the UAE, is creating a buzz. Recently, the film won the Golden Royal Bengal Tiger Award for the Best Short Film at the Kolkata International Film Festival.
Shot in Sharjah and Dubai in 2021, Mein Mehmood is about its protagonist Mehmood, who works as a telecaller in a Dubai-based tourism company. The story shows Mehmood’s struggles to meet targets because he doesn’t speak fluent English. “Mein, Mehmood is a story on immigrants from the pink and blue-collared section in the Middle-East. We delved into how difficult it is for them to stay away from families. The underlying theme is language barriers. Most of the immigrants who go over there from Asia, particularly Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and also India, cannot converse in English properly. The problems they face because they don’t know English is what the film examines,” says Saha.
The 11-minute film was shot in 2021 and started doing festival rounds in 2022. The film has premiered at festivals in Toronto, Chicago, Seattle, Washington DC, South Africa, Vancouver and Florence before coming to Kolkata.
The story might sound familiar, as many would have come across similar problems faced by blue-collar workers. The same happened to Saha as well during a trip to the Middle-East. The Bengaluru-based filmmaker used to take taxis, buses and other forms of public transport. There, he came across many immigrants, mostly Asian. He realised they hardly have any conversations. “When I spoke to some of them, they told me they don’t speak out of fear of being judged. They are not able to speak up because they don’t know one language out of 6,500 languages. Imagine the number of voices that are getting suppressed because of this,” explains Saha.
Right now, the team is excited about the Jaipur International Film Festival as they are nominated for an award. “We are keeping our fingers crossed about it. After that we looked for some of the screenings in Bengaluru,” he concludes.