Anuja (2024)

Nine year old "Anuja" (Sanda Pathan) is a bright young lass who has been forced to work in a sweatshop for the exploitative "Verma" (Nagesh Bhonsle) who knows full well that she and her elder sister "Palak" (Anaya Shanbhag) have little by way of options. Then her schoolteacher arrives to point out that it's illegal to employ someone so young - even if she does somewhat unconvincingly lie about her age - and that for the want of just 400 rupees she could take an examination that could earn a scholarship to school. Her sister is mindful of the opportunity awaiting her sister, but where are they going to get the cash and even then how might she ever sneak away from her duties long enough to sit it? The two girls give quite a potent performance here as the film lays bare the fairly common practice of child labour at the hands of a man who couldn't care less about them or their educational prospects, and I did find the ingenuity of "Palak" quite affecting too - but the film itself is just too short to really do much more than scratch the surface of a societal predicament faced by millions caught in the employment trap so common in the rag trade - and not just in India either. There's a nice little twist in the tale at the end, but it's not really a fitting topic for a short film to do much justice to.