Some of the inspiration for Riha, a story he has been working on for several years now — first as a feature film, which the Hindi film industry is yet to accept as a possible film, and now as this short film — came from his own life.

Zoya Diwan (Indu Sharma) and her 8-year-old son Riyaan (Ahad Khan) are stuck in a claustrophobic family. Zoya’s activist husband Mirza Diwan (Ashwath Bhatt) controls their every move and abuses them and manipulates them. When another victim of domestic abuse seeks her out for help, Zoya decides to take up the challenge. While economic and social class divide the two women, their quest for freedom unites them.

Written by Zakia and Anup Abraham Parackal, Riha is a restrained study of interiorised violence. Fear and suffocation permeate the narrative; there is no overt dramatisation of violent behaviour. We only see the precipice of active violence, anticipating a scene, which never comes. Zakia reasons, “Before my mother took the decision to walk out of her marriage and we became free, both of us lived with the fear of violence all the time — the possibility that it is going to erupt any moment. That is a debilitating and soul-crushing reality to live with. I wanted the film to portray that unease, that fear.”

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During those years of his childhood, films on TV — films of Yash Chopra, among others — were Zakia’s solace and escape. “They had so much joy and fun, I had decided then that I was going to make a film one day,” Zakia says.

He and his co-writer (also co-producer) Parackal, first wrote a screenplay for a feature film. “Everyone producer or studio we took the script to loved it, praise it effusively and then say they wouldn’t produce it,” Zakia says. That was 2020-2021, when Amazon Prime Video was in the eye of a censorship storm with the film Taandav because the film was seen as offensive.

After having worked on a few film projects including writing for Sudhir Mishra’s Afwah (2023) and writing dialogues for a sitcom, Zakia and Parackal decided to turn the feature-length screenplay into this short film. Shot in Ahmedabad, the camera of cinematographer Dhrupad Shukla suffuses the narrative — sparse on dialogues and rich in acting skills and visual language — with an ominosity that reflect what the characters are feeling. The background score by Sandesh Shandilya adds to the atmospheric sweep. “Making this film is the single most transformative thing I have done for myself. My system was clogged and I couldn’t do much. I had to get this story out of my way; it was more than therapy,” Zakia says.

Both the writers interviewed his mother, who plays a small part in the film of a quietly supportive neighbour of Zoya and Riyaan in Riha, watched the film for the first time with awe and tears. “Both of us realised at that point that the film had become much larger than the painful lived reality of those years from my childhood.”

Watch the film here:

Riha has been screened at the Bengaluru International Film Festival, Tasveer Film Festival in Seattle and the Dharamshala Film festival. Indu Sharma, who plays the lead role of Zoya, has been nominated for the Critics’ Choice Awards for Best Actress in the Short Film category this year.

As a film, Riha is more than an autobiographical ode or memory-wrestling. It is a powerful history of violence — of being on the receiving end of serial violence, bullying and taunts, and of being part of a marginalised community. Its triumph is that there is no revelling or justification of either violence or hatred — but in articulating the need for freedom and love.

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.