Watch: Short film ‘Uravu’ highlights the hardship brought on by Kerala’s crippling drought

For people who are still not yet fully convinced about the severity of Kerala’s drought situation, short film Uravu is a must watch.

Director Sandheep P through his film Uravu (The Spring), narrates the story of how hard the struggle is when water is a distant dream.

Scripted and edited by Sandheep himself, Uravu is produced by Pipal Tree of Fireflies Inter Culture Centre in Bangalore as part of its Climate Justice Campaign. Uravu is the story of a woman in her fifties who has to ‘steal’ water from her office to cook rice back home.

Even otherwise, the woman is poor and struggling to make ends meet. Working as a sweeper in an office in the city, she gets ‘caught’ one day by the security staff, who had been keeping an eye on her to find out what she was taking home every day in a plastic bag.

On the day she is caught, she is forced to buy a bottle of water with her meagre income and has to walk back home, not being able to pay for a bus ticket.

At home, far away from the city, her daughter and grandson wait for her to come and cook food. They have been tired off digging up wells on the premise of their house, taking loans from banks, but the spring of water is not found in any of them. The whole village is suffering, as they have to walk to a distant place to fetch water. None of the characters in the film are named.

Uravu has won the award for the best short film at IWAH All Kerala Short Film Fest held in Kozhikode in March.

Akhila, who acted in the lead role, won the award for the Best Actress at the All Kerala Blossom Short Film Fest at Kondotty in Malappuram held in April.

Uravu released online on Tuesday and has already garnered over 2500 views. 

The film is inspired by the story of Sandheep’s former teacher and friend M Noushad. Crew of the film is from Kamura Visual Signals, which is an art community based in Kozhikode.

Cinematographers Shafeeq Kodinhi and Mohammed Adbul Rasheed, shot the film in 5 D camera. The locations were Ramanattukara, Vazhayoor and Farooq in Kozhikode. 

Uravu is the fifth short film by Sandheep. “Many people can relate to the life of the woman in Uravu. There may be many more people like her around us, going through such sufferings, but we still don’t know them. My aim was to communicate how important water is, in life, through the visual medium,” Sandheep told The News Minute.

The 28-year-old director, a native of Pookkottur in Malappuram, is a freelance writer and a guest lecturer of Journalism at Government College Mankada, Malappuram.

He also said that Uravu is a warning about what lies in store for us, if we do not preserve natural water bodies or conserve water.

“Water can’t be replaced with anything else. It’s high time we think of it. The story is a fiction, but I am sure there are similar real-life situations,” he added.   

Here is the film: