Title of film : An Engineered Dream
Director Name : HEMANT KUMAR GABA
Cast & crew :
Producer : Hemant Gaba
Editor : Saba Rehman
Cast :
Synopsis : Career decisions in India aren’t an individual’s choice. Parents, extended families and society at large groom the kids for a predestined career path of engineering or medical science. In India, admission to prestigious colleges for these disciplines is highly competitive with an acceptance rate of less than 1%. Parents start out their children young and send them to the hub of cram schools, Kota, a city in North-west India. More than 200,000 teenagers in Kota live in cubicle size rooms and study 15 hours a day to prepare for the entrance exam to top colleges. They do this for two consecutive years and sometimes three. With such odds, the pressure is intense. When 99% students are destined to fail, many never leave their tiny rooms, ending their lives prematurely. What is it about living in Kota that could leave someone in such despair? Who shall bear the moral responsibility of those who chose to leave? Life in Kota seems like the entire system is abetting their suicide. These kids may have excelled in some other discipline but they are sacrificed at the altar of ‘An Engineered Dream’. The film follows the life of four such teenagers in Kota.
Director Bio : Hemant Gaba attended filmmaking workshops in School of Visual Arts in New York in 2007-08 and dabbles both in documentaries and fiction. His debut film Shuttlecock Boys (2011) was screened in several film festivals in India, US, Singapore and Australia. Raindance had considered the film to be one of the best Indian Independent Films in 2012. His short film SuperGirl (2014) about a school girl who wants to become a Super Hero was screened at TIFF Kids -15, IDSFFK Kerala, Taiwan International Children’s Film Festival, San Diego Asian Film Festival, Seoul Youth International Film Fest and several other film festivals in Sydney, Bangalore, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Hyderabad etc. His medium length documentary on Japanese Anime Subculture called Japan In Nagaland was part of Film Southasia before its television premiere on Indian National Television Channel. He was one of the three winners of The Asian Pitch, 2016 that gave funding for An Engineered Dream. He is alumni of Documentary Campus – Crossing Borders (2017) and Let’s Doc, 2017 (an initiative of Docedge, Kolkata).
Filmography :
