KOLKATA: The Nandan screening of 'My Son and His Grandfather' at the 5th South Asian Short Film Festival has explored the universal theme of the empty nest syndrome of grandparents in nuclear families. Completed during the pandemic, the film is about an octogenarian in a middle-class Bengali household pining for his grandson. What begins as a personal film or 'the cinema of me', becomes a metaphor for the untold story of many grandparents across the globe and how they struggle with pangs of separation.
In most cases, empty-nest syndrome is associated with parents when children grow up or leave. Little is said about how doting grandparents deal with this absence. For them, the presence of grandchildren gives them a new lease of life. Hence, the sudden absence of the child gives a jolt to their new identity, making life and living difficult. Perhaps this is the first time that a film has tapped into such a subject while banking on restraint and minimalism. "At the recent Mumbai International Film Festival screening, I was overwhelmed when someone from the audience came up to me crying and said that she was moved by the film since it is a real problem in her country too,” said visual communicator-and-director Bijoy Chowdhury.
