A middle-aged independent film maker, Gulzar, is happy to get word that the prestigious award committee has selected his film. A rare honor, as his film is the only one chosen from the entire South Asian region. But Gulzar cannot attend the awards ceremony in London, as he has a pre-scheduled medical procedure for his mother to attend to at the same time. The film committee takes a preemptive measure to keep ready his acceptance speech, which is to be played at the ceremony in the event of his film winning the award. Irfan, a senior journalist, is assigned with canning Gulzar’s acceptance speech. After the first take, Irfan expresses his apprehensions about the shot and says that he would have liked the speech to be a lot more emotional. He asks Gulzar to try again, this time with a lot more emotion. The unsophisticated Gulzar does not understand how he can get emotional about an event that is yet to happen to him. Irfan offers a simple solution that has some long-lasting effects on the unsophisticated Gulzar.
‘Ashq’ is a student short film directed by Daniel Shah. Having chosen a very mature topic for his film, Daniel goes about to do full justice to his project with some clever writing and by extracting commendable performance from his artists. Choosing to keep the format simple and without distractions, Daniel relies on the basics to tell his powerful story. For a film that is only about 10 minutes long, Daniel tells a lot of the prologue in the course of the current events without ever disturbing the flow. The intensity of the performances by the main characters tells this touching tale in a manner that leaves the viewer eager to know more.
There are tried and tested ways for actors to walk the fine path between method acting and mental sanity. But when an untrained armature walks down this slippery path, an accident become imminent.
