A boy who longs to smile, friend who understands him, family on the move — Smile Please traces humour, empathy, connection through life with medical disability
Smile Please, Bakul Matiyani’s 2023 National Award–winning short film, explores childhood friendship, disability and the quiet grief families often avoid confronting, through the story of a boy living with Moebius Syndrome, a rare medical disorder that impairs facial movement, whose only smile is the one he draws with his fingers on a mirror.
Set in a small-town household on the cusp of a life-altering move, the understated film centres on Ali, a teenager living with his parents .
Set in a small-town household on the cusp of a life-altering move, the understated film centres on Ali, a teenager living with his parents and sister, as he navigates fear, belonging and friendship on the last day before his family leaves home, capturing with sensitivity how vulnerability and love play out within families and friendships.
Matiyani, a graduate in Editing from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), wrote the film during the pandemic and shot and edited it during the brief break between the first and second waves.
A former first assistant director on Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance (2009), and the editor of several films and television commercials, including Dibakar Banerjee’s Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar (2021), Matiyani said the challenge of working with a teenage actor to portray a teenage character who cannot smile fuelled his creative motivation for the project. His partner, Neha Parti Matiyani, was the film’s producer and cinematographer.
Smile Please opens in a small-town household in transition. The family of four is busy packing up its belongings, preparing to leave behind a familiar life for a move to a big city. Ali lives with an undiagnosed case of Moebius Syndrome, a condition that impairs facial movement; he cannot smile or move his mouth.
Ali lives with an undiagnosed case of Moebius Syndrome, a condition that impairs facial movement; he cannot smile or move his mouth.
On his last day at home, as the family readies itself for the move, Ali worries about being accepted in an unfamiliar city and grapples with the grief of leaving behind his best friend, Rajan, who also lives with a disability. As the two boys devise ways to stay in touch, Ali is compelled, for the first time, to ask something of his father.
“It is very common in families, perhaps more in Indian families, to accept certain medical conditions. There is a tolerance and normalising of suffering and shame — as if, if you can’t see a problem, there is no problem. That’s one thing that I wanted the screenplay to be about,” Matiyani said.
As the two boys devise ways to stay in touch, Ali is compelled, for the first time, to ask something of his father.
“It’s the first time Rishabh Karmakar who plays Ali, faced the camera. There was a certain honesty to this first-time actor, in the way he approached the character, and that shaped the realistic and no-fuss treatment of the condition he portrays, and also the narrative,” he added.
Moebius Syndrome occurs when the fifth and seventh cranial nerves, which control facial movement, are absent or underdeveloped. As a result, a person cannot move their facial muscles, and the face is unable to express emotions.
“In that context, the friendship and bond between the two boys that unfold through the film, becomes one that is hard and yet very easy. The two boys have an unspoken understanding of each other’s shortcomings and strengths,” Mutiyani said.
Mutiyani infuses the relationship between the two boys with moments of wry humour.
As a reflection on living with a rare medical disorder that is difficult to explain or understand — seen through the mother’s overprotective instincts and the father’s determination to make Ali more equipped to face real-life challenges — Smile Please remains a non-preachy, understated film.
Short Stream | Smile Please by Bakul Matiyani
The film travelled to several film festivals, including the Kineko International Children’s Film Festival in Japan, where children acted out the characters as the film screened, and has since won the hearts of young audiences around the world. Matiyani is now at work on his feature film with a theme that touches upon India’s healthcare system.
Details:
Producer: Neha Parti Matiyani
Budget:₹7.5 lakh
Language: English & Hindi
Running time: 22 minutes
Short Stream is a monthly curated section, in which we present an Indian short film that hasn’t been seen before or not widely seen before but are making the right buzz in the film industry and film festival circles. We stream the film for a month on HT Premium, the subscription-only section in hindustantimes.com .
(Sanjukta Sharma is a Mumbai-based writer and film critic. Write to her at sanjukta.sharma@gmail.com)
