Hyderabadi documentary goes international

Hyderabad: Akshay Pusthay, 22, who made a short film exclusively shot on Iphone got international recognition as it got selected for African Smartphone International Film Festival. 

The documentary film “Nareshh a gardener's life story" will be screened on December 22. When Akshay visited his friend Aslam’s workplace, he saw Naresh, the gardener, working there. During interactions with the gardener, the thought of making a short film on Naresh cropped up in the mind of the young entrepreneur. He said that he immediately started taking videos and pics of the protagonist of his short film. Akshay said that “I wanted to make a ROM-COM short film with Hyderabadi flavour. So, I captured a few videos of Naresh for body language reference for my short film, which I saw later on my PC and felt it was a bit inspiring and I decided to complete the project which was just an idea at that time.”

But as the project moved further it was an uphill task and the young entrepreneur almost gave up the movie while editing, However, he was thankful for DSN Films and their editor Vinay Mahankhali with whom he spent 15-20 days watching them editing their films. The whole documentary was shot on iPhone 7 Plus mobile with 2K resolution and the audio was added from royalty free music & Rakesh Chaurasia's Sea Breeze from YouTube. The voice-over was lent by Tiia Pusthay, his eldest brother’s wife. The script of voice-over was written by his other elder sibling Anurag Pusthay. Subtitles were added by Akshay’s friend Naga Raj. While the camera work, editing and direction was done by Akshay himself. 

Akshay said that he had submitted the film to more than 50 film festivals and as time passed, he lost hope of getting nominated for the festivals. “But out of the blue on December 1, which is also my mom’s birthday, I received a mail from the African Smartphone International Film Festival with a message ‘congratulations your movie has been selected and you can promote your movie by adding our laurels,” said a beaming Akshay.

BY Satishraj G Medapatla