2024 Short | Clown

7pm, Thursday 19th September

Screening before The Moogai

TICKETS & INFO

2023 | 10m | Aarushi Chowdhury | Australia | UC15+

Eight-year-old Sami can't wait to play “serial killers” with her older sister Jiya, but her sister-time is threatened when Jiya's cool new bestie arrives.

‘Clown’ is a coming-of-age drama laced with comedy. At its heart, it is a story about our first interaction with loneliness. Should we choose the embrace of others at the expense of rejecting ourselves?

Director Biography

Aarushi Chowdhury is a Writer-Director who is passionate about stories that subvert expectations and explore the concept of 'otherness'. While studying Law and Commerce at Monash, she worked in every department of screen in order to broaden her knowledge of the production process. Her most recent credits include "Production Coordinator" for the SBS documentary 'Whatever Scares You' (2022), "Casting Assistant" for 'Shantaram' (2022) and "Producer" for the short film 'Lacerate' (2023). She now freelances as a commercial writer and director for brands like Subway, Telstra, ACMI and the National Ballet.

Aarushi spends the rest of her time writing and directing passion projects like her short film 'Clown', partly funded by a City of Melbourne grant. She most recently enjoyed writing research for an upcoming series for Tony Ayres Productions and is currently in pre-production for her new short film 'Gullak' which received development funding from VicScreen and Screen Australia via AFTRS Talent Camp. Whilst Aarushi's body of commercial work sits primarily in the comedy genre, her narrative work gravitates toward a more dramatic space that hopes to explore the complexities of familial relationships, class and power.

Director Statement
My thirteen-year-old sister recently told me that she thought her Indian nose was "ugly". I thought I had taught her enough about self-acceptance. I wrongfully assumed that I had gone through enough of the hard parts of adolescence as an Indian teen, so that she wouldn't have to. It hurt me to know that society was still rejecting so many parts of her and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

These are some of the most definitive years of my sister's life. She is at the pinnacle of deciding which parts of herself to keep and which to abandon, as well as learning how to claim the agency she has over those decisions. This film is my subtle way of helping her and other Indian girls to know that it's natural to want to change, adapt and crave inclusion but it can also be really fun to be yourself in full throttle. And perhaps when you find home within yourself, you may also feel less alone.

As a child, I myself oddly found lots of comfort in scary movies which naturally developed as an important element of Sami's personality. This film isn't a vilification of traditional makeup practices, but rather an exploration into the subtle and explicit physical and social standards we impose as a society in order to deem someone worthy of inclusion. 'Clown' is a subverted exploration into what it truly means to be lonely.