• Golden Globe Awards

Baba (India)

Set in a small village in Maharashtra, India, in the 1990s, Baba is a heart-warming story of a deaf-mute couple, who adopt a hearing child and bring him up with the little money they have and lots of love. Their world is torn apart when the child’s well-to-do biological mother comes back to claim him.Director Raj R Gupta says: ”Having read this story, though it was a piece of fiction, I felt emotionally unnerved. I thought that as a filmmaker, I should take this to a larger audience. I knew that filmgoers would empathize with such characters and would be carried away with emotions.”But that was not the only thing – Gupta wanted to illustrate the unrelenting struggle of the father to make his family happy. “The main protagonist in the film is the father, Madhav, who leaves no stone unturned to make sure that his son gets off his speech impairment and leads a normal life.”Baba revolves around the eight-year-old Shankar who is living happily with his adoptive father, Madhav, and mother, Anandi. Then his biological mother, Pallavi, and her husband, Rajan, arrive to acquire the boy’s legal custody. Madhav and Anandi, being deaf-mute, haven’t been able to teach him to speak, and communicate with Shankar only through sign language. Pallavi, being rich, should easily get custody and the boy would get a bright future. But emotional bonding is more important than money. The film’s central conflict depends on the court case to decide Shankar’s future.After the first court hearing, Madhav realizes that if he can teach Shankar to speak, the court might grant him custody. But will he be able to teach the kid eight years of words in just 22 days? Director Raj R Gupta concludes: “This is a story where the silence speaks louder than words.”Deepak Dobriyal performs the part of Madhav and Aryan Meghji is the boy, Sankar. Baba, the Father, is actor-filmmaker Sanjay Dutt – Baba is his wife Maanayata’s first Marathi production under their banner Sajay S Dutt Productions. Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by around 83.1 million Marathi people of Maharashtra, India. It is one of the 22 official languages of India.