Short Stream | Anime and adolescence: How Squeaky Shoes That Chase Lost Souls explores teenage turmoil
Debesh Mehrotra’s short film is an anime-inspired narrative about what happens when teenagers come together in the face of adversity
At 30, Delhi-based filmmaker Debesh Mehrotra is already worlds and mindsets apart from the struggling Mumbai filmmaker. While regular work involving shooting and directing trending videos and brand films keeps him going, he has been writing, directing and shooting indie shorts since the pandemic, including cinematography for the film The Handbag written and directed by Osman Amanullah and this hearty, anime-inspired short, Squeaky Shoes That Chase Lost Souls, written, directed and shot by him, and executive-produced by his regular collaborator, Osman Amanullah.
Two teenage boys, played with emotional heft and conviction by debut actors Sarthak Gambhir and Arihant Nayak, go to the same school. An instant connection forms as they guide each other through insecurities and shield each other from bullies. But all is not right in this world. Memories blur as the boys learn the true meaning of being a hero, and if it is possible to be a hero to someone when you can’t save yourself. The boys are polar opposites — one, a bespectacled, diffident, comic book artist, and the other, a curious confident boy with ears to the ground. The one who creates superheroes is a superhero too — and so is the one who doesn’t create any, but simply inspires the other boy’s drawings. Mehrotra, himself an anime geek, has done the drawings shown in the film, inspired by the characters of the My Hero Academia series. A character stands with his hands on his waist, staring down threat and jeopardy — reflecting the anime posturing of the characters.
It is a film about teenage tumult, feeling disconnected, fitting into or breaking out of boxes, ADHD, bullying, and the sentient quality of memory. Mehrotra, a cinematographer trained at LV Prasad College in Chennai, has a light touch in his visual orchestration, which effectively creates an atmosphere that is as soulful as it is melancholic. Teenage years are not an easily understood condition — and Mehrotra’s film manages to bring out its misunderstood and solitary emotional blueprint without melodrama or saying and showing too much.
Watch the film here:
Squeaky Shoes That Chase Lost Souls ultimately becomes a testament to what it might mean to be an emotional and creative misfit. Mehrotra says the film has some resonances from his journey of creative ferment. “Contextually speaking, the film mirrors what I was feeling at that time. A lot of dissociation and disillusionment. Negative surrounds an artistic person, but you can’t let that burden you, you have to get help,” he says.
Mehrotra says he is an accidental filmmaker. He happened to stumble on a screening of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali after graduating with a Psychology major when he was also helping his cousin, a wedding photographer. He soon became a wedding filmmaker, a commercially lucrative profession for filmmakers struggling to make their mark in Delhi. Later, he came to Mumbai. He was in Mumbai for a couple of years, first working at Drishyam Films and then directing a film “that borders on soft porn” set in Gorakhpur, UP. “That film taught me a lot about the difficulties of the filmmaking process and several other things, although the film thankfully never released!” Mehrotra says. Mehrotra doesn’t quite cherish his hustle in Mumbai, calling it his “Mumbai PTSD”. He moved back to Delhi and began working as a filmmaker.
Squeaky Shoes That Chase Lost Souls has travelled to the Absurd Film Festival in Italy, the Jaipur International Film Festival and the Genesis International in France. “Our country can be fairly anti-individual. And some of the responses in India have been informed by that,” Mehrotra says, adding, what seems like the most interesting bit about his filmmaking journey: “I am not a filmmaker who wants to make a lot of films. I have a few things to say about cinema; I want to say that well. I don’t want to stay a filmmaker forever.”
Short Stream is a monthly curated section, in which we present an Indian film that hasn’t been seen before or not widely seen before but is 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 on hindustantimes.com.
Sanjukta Sharma is a Mumbai-based writer and film critic. Write to her at Sanjukta.sharma@gmail.com
Producer: Debesh Mehrotra
Writer and Director: Debesh Mehrotra
Budget: 2 lakh rupees
Running time: 13 min.
Language: Hindi
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