Baromas — movie set in Vidarbha captures plight of farmers, youth

Directed by Dhiraj Meshram, a graduate from the Film and Television of India (FTII) and currently an Associate Professor of Film Production at the institute, portrays the plight of farmers and youth residing in rural India.

SET IN Vidarbha region, the film opens with a shot that shows a social activist engaging in talks with farmers, who have innumerable worries written all over their wrinkled faces – from unpredictable weather to debts to low prices fetched by crops.

Ten minutes into this feature film and one knows that Baromas has its heart in the right place. Directed by Dhiraj Meshram, a graduate from the Film and Television of India (FTII) and currently an Associate Professor of Film Production at the institute, portrays the plight of farmers and youth residing in rural India.

Baromas, which means month-after-month, is based on Sahitya Akademi winning novel by the same name by Sadanand Deshmukh. When Meshram read this novel in 2005, he could instantly draw parallels between the novel’s characters and his own life. For someone who was born and brought up in Amravati in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and who had witnessed day-to-day struggles faced by farmers, the desire to adapt the novel into a film, came very naturally.

“Though the film’s story revolves around one particular family but through this one story, it goes on to tell the stories of hundreds and thousands of families residing in rural parts of India and not just Vidarbha. They all have the same issues – be it unemployment, dependence on weather, market sources, or petty politics in the area,” says Meshram, who graduated from FTII in 2004.

His films in the past – Oadh and Haravalele Indradhanush (The Lost Rainbow) have won many accolades and acclaim at number of film festivals in India and overseas.

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