‘Morgue’, a heart-wrenching short film and a tight slap to the society!

Which one is more tormenting for parents - mourning the death of their young daughter or the vortex of unnerving anxiety, triggered by her sudden disappearance? Champa, mother of Uma, who is missing for almost two months, has no ready answer! Nor do Haru, the equally distressed father.

Somendra Prasad Chakraborty

’s short film ‘Morgue’ is a tight slap to the society. It deals with a startling reality of women in our society.

Moumita Mitra

who plays the mother Champa delivers a stellar act switching her persona with great finesse. Her expressions do the talking. She slips into the character of a morbid mother like a pro.

Jagannath Chakraborty

, playing the helpless father, is equally praiseworthy.

Called upon by the police they undertake the saddest journey of their life to identify the dead body of a brutalized girl and to ascertain whether she is Uma or not. They traverse an archipelago of small islands and network of mighty rivers, braving the scorching summer and the indifference of people. Soon they find themselves on the Gangor river which once in a distant mythical time had seen Behula carrying the dead body of her beloved husband Lakhindar (Bengali Folklore). But their journey is suddenly interrupted by an incident of mob-lynching, one in a series of

occurrences. Next day, they resume their journey and reach the rural hospital where in a make-shift morgue two dead bodies are there side by side, one of the unidentified girl and another of the victim of previous night's mob-lynching. Now what awaits Haru and Champa - the disconsolate certainty of daughter's death or the abyss of uncertainty their life had already plunged into?

“Every day, on an average, 174 children go missing in our country and a whooping number of those missing children, nearly fifty percent, never get back to their home! Such statistics, though, intimate us with the grimness of the ghoulish reality that swirls around us, but hardly can lend an ear to the silent wails of those shattered souls, whose missing children are never seen again. "Morgue", our humble endeavour, attends to the emotional upheavals of such parents, here, Haru and Champa, played against a society, often, cruel and indifferent,” says the director explaining the backbone and motive of ‘Morgue’ which has already traveled a number of prestigious film festivals.

Produced by Nirmal Chakraborty, the 23-minute long short film’s screenplay is also by the director while DOP is

Rana Dasgupta

. Gourab Chatterjee’s soothing music beautifully captures the essence of rural

Bengal

.