Thiruvananthapuram: Articles about Fireflies in the Abyss describe it as a documentary about a boy miner who finds his way out of the mine. Interestingly, the film, shown at IDSFFK 2016, does not end when the protagonist, the 11-year-old Suraj Subba, starts going to school, but when he returns to the coal mine for good, a year later.
Its director Chandrasekhar Reddy says, “Many have asked me why you can’t leave the film at the point where he goes to school. But the latter bit is important. Suraj makes a journey from being in the mine to studying in a school. Then he makes a choice about not being dependent on someone. It is heroic. I don’t see it as a sad ending.”
One does not have to wait until the end to understand that the impish little boy is strong-willed. Earlier in the film, it is shown that he refuses to move to Nepal with his sister, his sole support. “The film was pitched to various NGOs for funding. One person was so moved he came forward to support Suraj’s education. But the boy would not accept any assistance from anyone. He has a lot of pride in himself,” he says.
It is not a melancholic child labour story, though the filmmaker does crawl into dimly-lit veins of a mine. The music is sunny, hopeful, and Suraj is not its only hero. Mr Reddy says that the other stories provide a context to Suraj’s decisions.
“I went to the village of Lad Rhymbai in Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya, with the intention of making a child labourer’s story. But my perception changed when I started to see their lives in such close quarters. I saw solidarity among the people, a sense of ownership in someone who wants to repay every penny he owes,” he says.
It was patiently filmed for seven months in 2012. He returned a year later to shoot the climax. Editing took about one and a half years. The film has been screened at various international festivals like International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Busan International Film Festival and Mumbai International Film Festival.
