Girgit Studios recently released an animated short film, Pahal, based on encouraging women entrepreneurship in India. The film is a part of the Her & Now media campaign by giz, India in partnership with The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, India.
Pahal revolves around three women entrepreneurs, Arshia, Mridu and Fulwari, waiting for their Start-up funding event to begin. Sharing about their start-up stories and struggles leaves them with something more valuable than just the funds they had come to the event for.
Directed by Swarup Deb, Avinash Medhe and Anuj Kumar, bringing about a mindset change within the families to become the nourishing soil to help more and more women entrepreneurs to flourish is the main hope behind this project for the trio.
The team at Girgit interviewed over 35 women entrepreneurs, from metros and smaller towns, from 23 year olds to 65 year olds, from Rajasthan to Telangana, coming from affluent families to ones with very modest backgrounds, from successful serial entrepreneurs to those who felt that they had the potential but didn’t end up becoming one.
Girgit Studios was shortlisted from over 100 entries they received from studios from across the country for this project. “We were obliged when we men were entrusted with the responsibility to make this film to inspire women and their families. To ensure we do not end up mansplaining it to women we consulted Shilpa Das, our professor from our Alma Matter NID and a few more female designer friends of ours to be sure our interpretations and expressions are appropriate,” Deb mentioned.
The team believes that men and women are wired differently and both genders have a certain way of looking at things and approaching them. “If an equal number of women are not leading businesses or decisions we are surely missing out on a huge amount of possibility in making this world a better place for all to live,” the team added.
Krishna Kothari led the animation for Mridu’s Story, Aman Luthia led Arshia’s story sequences. Kumar led Fulwari’s story sequences while Aditya Hegde led the 3D animation coordinating with Crazy Cub studios who did the 3D character animations. Like most of the studio’s films the team shot acting references of theatre actors as per our storyboard. This helped them maintain a consistent body language and acting performance of the 3D characters, and also helped in speeding the 3D character animations.
Famous personalities like Dipannita Sharma Atwal and Ashwini Kalsekar were on board to voice the leading characters of the film.
Films with social relevance have always been an integral part of Girgit Studios. Their films like Amlu, Tickles and Hugs and Muskaan dealt with themes of personal safety education for kids, child sexual abuse, female feoticide and gender equality. “We feel it needs to be a two way approach of motivating women to lead entrepreneurial initiatives and bringing a mindset change in the larger society so that it becomes a nurturing field for these women entrepreneurs to flourish to their full potential. We hope the film plays its due role in achieving that,” the trio concluded.
We too hope that the film turns out to be an inspiration to many talented women, who are waiting for their dreams to come true, to be recognised in the society and have a successful fulfilled life.