Naked to Chutney: How many of these amazing short films have you seen?

Here's a list of 10 Indian short films which have managed to do storytelling in such a way that we sincerely think Bollywood can learn a thing or two from them.

Anumeha Saxena
Sep 18, 2017

With the Internet becoming easily accessible to everyone, platforms like YouTube have become a powerful tool for budding as well as well-established artists to showcase their talent or try something other than the mainstream cinema. Short films are one medium, which have given young filmmakers as well as actors a window to explore varied roles and get noticed, not just by some big banner but also by the audience. Storytelling is an art and some of the short films have managed to do it in such an excellent way that we sincerely think Bollywood can learn a thing or two from them. For the starters, may be, experimenting with new concepts.

The art of storytelling and portraying it onscreen is definitely a difficult one but with the talent that is out there, we have seen some of the most brilliant works like The Bypass (2003) by Amit Kumar, Positive ( 2007) by Farhan Akhtar, Afterglow (2012) by FTII graduate Kaushal Oza, That Day After Every Day (2013) by Anurag Kashyap, Nayantara’s Necklace (2014) by Jaydeep Sarkar, Interior Cafe Night (2016) by Adhiraj Bose and White Shirt (2017) by Sumit Arora, to name a few.

Many of our Indian short films have won awards at internationally and still others have managed to strike a chord with the audience. Paying a tribute to these brilliant storytellers who have given us hope that meaningful content is here to stay and comedy does not mean sexist jokes, here’s a list of 10 short films that you must watch, if you haven’t yet.

1. Naked (2017), Director: Rakesh Kumar, Starring: Kalki Koechlin and Ritabhari

2. Carbon (2017), Director: Maitreyi Bajpai & Ramiz Ilham Khan, Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Jackky Bhagnani & Prachi Desai

3. Kheer (2017), Director: Surya Balakrishnan, Starring: Anupam Kher & Natasha Rastogi

4. Khujli (2017), Director: Sonam Nair, Starring: Jackie Shroff & Neena Gupta

5. Chutney (2016), Director: Jyoti Kapur Das, Starring: Tisca Chopra, Adil Hussain & Rasika Duggal

6. Kriti (2016), Director: Shirish Kunder, Starring: Manoj Bajpayee, Radhika Apte & Neha Sharma

7. Chindi Crime Patrol (2016), Director: Kumar Devanshu, Starring: Tanmay Bhatt, Zakir Khan, Navin Polishetty, Kaneez Surka, Farishtey Faroodi

8. Ahalya (2015), Director: Sujoy Ghosh, Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee & Radhika Apte

9. El’ayichi (2015), Director:Devashish Makhija , Starring: Nimrat Kaur & Divyendu Sharma