It required hours of patient talking, listening and observing, mostly in Aram Nagar, Mumbai, where a majority of auditions take place. Following a mother taking her children to studios and waiting till they finish shooting, observing a couple that has come in from Delhi with stars in their eyes for their child, and sitting in on a session with a young girl, on the cusp of womanhood, learning to emote from a trainer. Deepa Bhatia spent months shooting the six episodes that comprise First Act, a Prime Video documentary series that is as soul-shattering as it is hope-inducing. Bhatia, one of the finest editors in the Mumbai film industry, knows about child stars. Her husband Amole Gupte wrote the script for the much-feted Taare Zameen Par (2007). She was a close observer of how Gupte shot their son, Partho, in the lovely Stanley ka Dabba (2011)— only over the weekends so school schedules would not be disturbed, and then only if the other child actors wanted. "He was trying to show the film industry another way of treating child actors. No one was taken out of his or her environment," she says. Sadly, the industry doesn't seem to have learned, or rather parents haven't, and they continue to use their children as meal tickets or just to live their dreams through them. But Bhatia is not judgemental, she understands the compulsions of parents and the dreams of their children. "The power dynamic between a parent and a working child is so skewed," she says. Some of the most affecting scenes are with erstwhile child stars, such as Sarika, and Darsheel Safary (the young star of Taare Zameen Par). In Sarika, especially, who was her mother's sole support, there is as much pain as there is forgiveness. Bhatia spent most of 2018 researching the movie, and then started filming in 2019, amassing over 800 hours of filming. The director of Nero's Guests (2009), for which she had interviewed 200 farmers' widows, she is no stranger to either documenting the many to encapsulate the essence of the subject, or to whittling down something to make sense, having edited movies such as Kai Po Che! (2013) and TV series such as Netflix's 2023 hit, Cla$$. Her son Partho has grown up, and armed with a degree from University of Southern California, Los Angeles, will soon be ready with his first film.

Deepa Bhatia

The World of Broken Dreams

In Salman They Trust