Anjali Patil Instagram – Vishal Jejurkar’s VENI / BRAID (2024) – the way I want to show this Marathi short film to my mother* as soon as it gets a wide release! 😭😭
I came to know about this short film last year via Anjali Patil’s post after I became a fan of her through Prasanna Vithanage’s WITH YOU, WITHOUT YOU (2012), and finally got to watch it at BIFFes that too as a part of 3 short films screening alongside BLIND SPOT (2024) and SHACKLES OF SKY (2024). Got to meet the director Vishal after the screening and shared with him about the coincidence of curating Shackles of Sky and Braid in consecutive screenings as they both work very well as a double feature wrt one particular theme associated with pregnancy and financial struggles.
***SPOILER ALERT***
*My mother has a younger brother who is far well-educated than her and settled in the US for the last 2 decades, and it’s in the house owned by him that my mother is now living along with her mother since the passing of her father in Dec 2018. During the time of Oct-Dec 2018, my grandfather was on the hospital bed and around Nov or so, he started to forget most of our faces, including mine, which scared me a lot on one of my visits to the ICU. My mother always used to tell me how her father showed a certain partiality in his love to her brother or the male child, and how the fate had it that my mother was the only person available to actively care of him during his last days. The happiest part for her during this sad situation was that my grandfather acknowledged my mother being there for him through certain emotional gestures while in the ICU, and my mother treasures those moments for life!
Now, there is a twist to how the old lady Narmada in the film is related to this couple of Varsha and Amol, and that made the film very heavy for me coupled with Anjali Patil’s very moving performance which is a complete 360 to her Bressonian-like character/turn when I watched her last in ‘With You, Without You’. Varsha has missed her period and has her doubts, but apart from the kid Yash she already has, Narmada is another kid she needs to take care of even more so than a just-born baby. (contd in comments) | Posted on 06/Mar/2025 09:58:03
