Dear Pope Francis - 17 mins, directed by Gauri Adelkar
When her best friend is taken away during an immigration raid, on the day of the Pope’s visit to their city, Adriana decides to take matters into her own hands.
Gauri Adelkar is an engineer turned filmmaker based in New York and Mumbai. She is currently a MFA candidate in Screenwriting & Directing at Columbia University. She is the current recipient of the Breaking Barriers Award for Female Directors. In 2017, a short film she co-wrote at Columbia was one of the five films that won the #NewView film competition organized by Glamor Magazine and the GirlGaze project. Her debut short - The Theft - won Best Director at the Boston International Film Festival, Best Short at the Boston Kids Film Festival, Gold Award at Documentary & Short Film Festival, Jakarta and screened at various international film festivals around the world.
How did you came up with the theme? :
The film to me, is about Hope Vs. Fear. It was this theme of a child’s innocent hope juxtaposed against the fearful reality of a situation, that attracted me to it. The story was written in 2015 by Alies Sluiter, my friend and classmate at Columbia, much before the 2016 election cast even more serious doubts on the state of immigrants in the country and we decided to collaborate on it. I wanted to direct it because it reflects the insecurity and fear that immigrants and particularly undocumented immigrants, who are active contributors to the country’s economy, feel on a daily basis and I am interested in discussing that in my work.
A little more about the film.
The film is a short fiction film about a 8 year old girl Adriana, whose best friend is taken away during an immigration raid on the day the Pope is visiting their city. When she realizes that no one will do anything about it, she decides to take matters into her own hands.
How we made the film:
The film went through a lot of trials and tribulations. It was supposed to be made in summer of 2016 but was postponed for a year later due to a personal emergency. Shooting an immigration raid scene and a cop running behind a child on the streets of New York can be tricky - especially for ultra low budget student films . Because this was a student film I was making at Columbia, a lot of people said this is too ambitious and risky. Which it is, because safety of cast and crew should be the top priority. But it’s not impossible if handled by the right team. So I approached Preethi Prasad who produced my first film and she said - Let’s do it! Having a producer who brings in that kind of commitment and assurance is key to making a film and I could do it because we did it together. We were lucky to have an awesome cast of actors who we found through Columbia casting and Actors Access and crew - Jason Chau our wonderful DP, Sumanth Molakala our AD and a lot of my classmates at Columbia who were crew members.
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