Sulena Majumdar Arora

A short film named ** ‘Sita **’ has been released on the OTT platform Disney Plus Hotstar. This short film is of nineteen minutes but it says a lot in this duration itself. Shriya Pilgaonkar is the heroine in this short film. It is understood from the name of the film itself that this film is raising a question mark on the place of women in the society. In this film, an attempt has also been made to raise a finger on caste discrimination.

Sita is the story of a girl child who suffers as a result of caste division even after her death. The story begins with a 10-year-old Dalit boy who while lying beside the road one day  sees a man alighting from a car  and throwing a bundle near a Mandir and driving away. When the boy goes closer and looks at the bundle , he is surprised to see that it was a newborn dead girl. He decides to give her a dignified funeral and takes her to the crematorium but is driven away by the crematorium people saying that the girl cannot be cremated there as she is a Dalit. The boy says that he does not know to which caste this girl belongs because he found her dead on the way. But the crematorium people did not agree saying that since he is  a Dalit, so the dead body of the girl also became a Dalit. The boy carries the dead  girl from place to place so that she can be properly cremated but in a circus of age-old tradition, it was not an easy task. After disappointment and frustration everywhere, he meets a mysterious woman named Maithili, who tells him the story of goddess Sita and helps him find his way.

Overall, the film narrates caste discrimination and the pain of being a woman. Produced and directed by Abhinav Singh, the film tackles the burning issue in a powerful manner. Shriya Pilgaonkar is a wonderful actress. Her acting in this film is also amazing. Other actors in the film are Om Kanojia, Lilliput and Devesh Ranjan and all of them have played their part brilliantly.