WATCH: Rajkummar Rao's unreleased short film Bombay Mirror

Starring Rajkummar Rao and Vijay Maurya, and directed by Shlok Sharma, it is a telling statement on the irrationality of communal violence. Shot four years ago, it was never formally released.

A sharp, three-minute film called Bombay Mirror surfaced on YouTube last week, and has suddenly become a talking point.

Starring

Rajkummar Rao

and Vijay Maurya, and directed by Shlok Sharma, it is a telling statement on the irrationality of communal violence. Shot four years ago, it was never formally released.

Rajkummar says, "We didn’t have any plans around it."

He adds that he had just finished shooting for his first major film, Dibakar Banerjee’s Love Sex Aur Dhokha (2010), and "was sitting free when Anurag (Kashyap, film-maker) called me and asked me to be part of this short film. They were making a series of such films then. We literally shot this one in a few hours, at a salon in Andheri."

Rajkummar

adds that he’d "forgotten about the film".

He says, "I had only seen it right after it was shot. It’s only last week that I started getting messages from people raving about the film. They told me how moved they were. I’m really happy for Shlok."

Ask him if the film was made with the intention of giving out a message, and he says, "We just wanted to put forward this message about secularism and communalism. I’m glad that’s come across well. I guess it was meant to release now."