The Blue Umbrella

Biniya, who lives in a small mountain village in Himachal Pradesh, acquires a bright blue umbrella from a tourist and becomes, overnight, the child everyone in the village looks at. Nandu, who runs the village's only shop, wants that umbrella for himself. The film is not interested in being a children's tale. It is interested in how fast envy grows in a small community: the umbrella stops being an object and becomes a question of standing, and the theft the shopkeeper commits turns the whole village against him. The form rests on mountain landscape and daily village life, with a pronounced use of colour; the blue of the umbrella is deliberately foregrounded in every frame. The source is Ruskin Bond's short novel of the same name. Vishal Bhardwaj directed and wrote the music, with lyrics by Gulzar. It first screened at the Pusan festival in 2005, opened in India in 2007, and won the national award for Best Children's Film. Pankaj Kapur plays the shopkeeper and Shreya Sharma plays Biniya. Who it is for: viewers who want something emotionally honest to watch with children. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. The film is slow and its plot circles a single object.