Twenty-year-old Aasmaan’s third short film is an adaptation of the writer’s short story, The Thief
Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 16, 2016)


Eleven years after Vishal Bhardwaj’s Blue Umbrella, based on Ruskin Bond’s 1980 novel of the same name came out, the writer-filmmaker-composer’s son Aasmaan’s third short film, an adaptation of Ruskin Bond’s story, The Thief, is ready to take wings.

The 20-year-old filmmaker started work on the script in early February last year and even though the shooting schedule looked much longer on paper, Aasmaan wrapped up the film with a seven-day shoot that was followed by four-five days of patchwork. “The schedule was spread over a month between July-end and the beginning of August since it was raining a lot,” he recalls, adding that his short, also titled The Thief, is now one of the 38 official selections for the category of “Viewing Room” at the 10th edition of NFDC’s Film Bazaar in Goa this year.

A record 202 films, including 131 fiction features and 33 documentaries, were submitted to the Viewing Room which serves as a mentoring platform for films-in-progress to find sales agents, film festivals, buyers, distributors and financing.

Aasmaan, currently a screenwriting student at the School of Visual Arts in New York, has already completed two short films – The Identities, featuring Kalki Koechlin, Vivaan Shah and Harish Khanna which released in 2013, and Murder On The Deccan Express, featuring Vivaan Shah and Aneesha Joshi, which released in 2015.

The Thief features Chandan Roy Sanyal, Rahul Kumar and Aditi Sharma in a special appearance and is the story of a boy who goes through a change of heart. Prod Aasmaan on how similar he is to his protagonist and he guffaws, “Like him, I have learnt many things by making mistakes but I wouldn’t say that I have gone so far as to steal from another person.”

Aasmaan believes that his prolific father who has co-produced the film along with singer-wife Rekha and co-written it with him and Aditya Nimbalkar has been a crucial part of his cinematic journey. “It is because of him that I am so passionate about filmmaking. I want to be more like him. I wanted to join the army before but my father’s decision to make Makdee exposed me to this world,” the youngster signs off.