‘Stardust’: Student short film of loss and grief receives Audience Award at Georgia Film Festival

Manahar Kumar, a graduate film and television student, received an Audience Award for his thesis film this past week. Kumar’s film, Stardust, received the award for best short film at the Georgia Film Festival.

The inspiration behind Stardust comes from the death of his grandfather, who he considered his mentor. The movie explores themes of death and fresh grief, revolving around an anxious daughter who battles her feelings over her father’s sudden death, at 30,000 ft, with no one to console her but a pensive poet.

Stardust is about the moment when death happens, when you start to question it and are overwhelmed by a rollercoaster of emotions, when you stay in your own world but still interact with the outside one with your masked emotions.

The characters of the film form a relationship in which they question religion, culture and their solution to problems. The goal is to “leave the viewers with not just hope to float on, but rather reach the shore faster,” said Kumar.

Kumar’s favorite scene to shoot is the dream sequence with the character Marium, in the middle of an airplane turbulence. “We had set up red lights throughout to visually portray her internal struggle with grief. Moreover, we shook the camera slightly to create the turbulence, in-camera itself. We shot it a couple of times. Lighting changes, the imagination of the actors and the timing of everything falling in place perfectly, made this my favorite and cathartic scene to shoot.” He feels that this was fitting because of the similarity between how people act during grief and during air turbulence: we put on a mask of composure.

The idea is also around how the social outcomes of a death can take years to heal. At the same time, it is “a moment that can awaken your soul and help you seek answers in a visceral manner,” said Kumar. “The film is a reminder to myself and the viewers that death is not a full stop. It’s just a comma.”