"Little Terrorist" is an Indian/British co-production in the Hindu language from 2004, so this short film has its 15th anniversary this year. It runs for 15 minutes too and was written and directed by Ashvin Kumar and he scored an oscar nomination for his work here. It is not to be taken for granted that he managed a solid filmmaking career since then and many other Oscar nominees from the short film categories did not have equal success. But it is also a bit unusual that this was Kumar's first short film, but he directed a full feature movie before already. I won't go much into detail about the cast here as I have no idea who these people are as I originate from far away from India. But even as an Indian you have to be a massive film buff I assume to recognize andy of these names and faces. The boy who plays the title charaacter for example has never acted in movies again and probably never will. Now as for this film, this is the story of a boy playing ball at the Pakistani/Indian border and in order to retrieve the ball on one occasion, he ends up on the wrong side of the border, namely in India. What follows is him trying not to be found and caught and we witness some Indians showing kindness and humanity and supporting him in his quest to retrun to his home country Pakistan. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Well.. it is not. But it is also never really on a level where it was a touching film or where you'd really cheer for the boy to get his happy ending. And of course he does eventually. One issue I had here was that this film could have played between Israel and Palestine, between USA and Mexico, between North Korea and South Korea and so on if we ignore language and geographical features. There is nothing really in here that makes this particular region stand out. Aside from that, even with the decent acting, the film felt too long at only 15 minutes plot-wise. i know "nothing happens" is not a valid criticism usually, but it is true here and in addition, there is nothing that makes up for this lack of action from the character development perspective for example. Or I would have taken any other perspective. But it just isn't there unfortunately. However, I am not surprised at all about the awards attention this film received. The subject is pure Oscar bait and probably now in 2019 even more so and this film would have won and not lost to Andrea Arnold's superior Wasp. I give Little Terrorist a thumbs-down. Overall, given its reception (rating and awards) I found it mostly a disappointment. I hope Kumar managed to improve since then. Don't watch.
Review of Little Terrorist
