Pihu is not a quintessential Hindi film. There are no songs in it. It has no big stars to offer. It doesn’t even have a bunch of colorful characters to carry the story forward. All writer-director Vinod Kapri relies upon is a two-year-old girl to narrate the story of his second feature film Pihu—the first being the 2016 political satire Miss Tanakpur Haazir Ho. Pihu was shot back in 2015 but the death of the producer delayed the film’s post production work. Pihu was eventually completed thanks to voluntary contributions from many of director’s friends and well-wishers. The film finally had its premiere at the 2017 International Film Festival (IFFI) in the Indian Panorama Section, a haven for offbeat films with small budgets, where it succeeded in grabbing eyeballs. Subsequently, Ronnie Screwvala and Siddharth Roy Kapur came onboard as producers, thereby paving the way for the film’s theatrical release.
Based on a real incident about a four-year-old girl left alone at home which came to Kapri’s attention while reading a newspaper report, Pihu tries to explore the different possibilities of what can go wrong with a child trapped in a situation. Kapri explores every possible threat that a child can encounter in an empty house: whether emerging from the use of a microwave oven, water heater, stream iron, gas stove, disinfectant cleaner, sleeping pills, or heights. Kapri’s biggest challenge was to work with the two-year-old Myra. He had to employ a multi-camera setup as there was no scope for retakes while working with a toddler. Also he had to makes changes in the script as per Myra’s behavioral patterns. If that’s not enough, Kapri had to spent months in order to familiarize Myra with the crew members.
Pihu is one of those films which rely heavily on editing. Getting the continuity going is always a major challenge while working with a non-actor which makes the job of an editor even more challenging. Also, it is never easy to combine footages shot simultaneously on different cameras. Credit goes to the team of Irene Dhar Malik, Sheeba Sehgal, and Archit D Rastogi for putting it all together so seamlessly. Another strong aspect of Pihu is Yogesh Jaini’s cinematography. Also, Vishal Khurana has done a decent job in the sound department.
Pihu is not a film for the faint-hearted. Every moment throughout its running time of 90 odd minutes is filled with unremitting tension bordering on horror. Pihu is a reminder that the art of filmmaking is not about making things big and grand but it is actually about making the canvas look appealing to the eye. You just need to pick up a clean state and throw in a few colors with a handful of artistic strokes and what you have is pure cinema that can endure the test of time. And Pihu promises to be just that. It is said that cinema is all about artifice but the artifice works only if the artist uses it to tell the truth. And Kapri, to his credit, only seems interested in telling the truth about the fragility of human relationships through the story of Pihu. Just as Picasso had said, “Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth.”