It has been five years since Apurva Asrani’s last work, Criminal Justice: Behind Closed Doors (2020), was released. In the interim, the writer and editor wrote three series that have yet to see the light of day. More importantly, that pause coincided with a personal loss — he lost his father in 2023. Asrani’s upcoming short film, The Pact, was born from that grief. 

“I had known my father as a strong, strict, larger-than-life personality. Vulnerability wasn’t part of his language,” started the writer, when we got on a call with him.

“As I saw him become dependent — say, when I had to lift him and take him to the washroom — I realized he believed his vulnerability was a burden on the family. I kept trying to talk to him, but I didn’t have the wisdom to offer comfort. I loved him dearly, but I was also afraid of him. That generation believed discipline and distance mattered. I wished we had found a language, but men usually don’t.”

Led by Parambrata Chattopadhyay, The Pact tells the story of a man confronting his memories as he revisits his late father’s home. The title comes from a real incident.

Asrani shared, “Once, my father had hit me. Later, he felt immense guilt. He took me out for ice cream, apologized profusely, and said, ‘Let’s not be trapped by father-son roles. Let’s be friends.’ That moment told me he was trying. I held on to that vulnerability.”

While Lakshmi R Iyer took the directorial reins, Asrani decided to turn producer with the short film. “When a story is this personal, a lot can be lost in translation. Producing allowed me to protect it,” he explained.

The result is a meditative film, miles away from the over-the-top movies that are dominating the scene today. Asrani, who broke out with Satya (1998), rued that such films have no space anymore.

“The middle-of-the-road, independent film is gone. I’ve survived because of these films — Satya, Shahid [2013], and Aligarh [2016]. They’re stories about real people, universal struggles. Today, you’re either making an arthouse film that only plays at festivals, or you’re expected to deliver a big, marketable product. There is no space for stories about real people anymore. Whenever the industry chooses commerce over storytelling, it pushes storytellers to tell their stories independently.”