The trailer opens to the laughter of a child. Funny how such an innocent sound can evoke chills up your spine like nothing else. The first few seconds feature a montage (eerily accompanied by her singing a nursery song) of the titular character who, as flashing text informs us, is two years old, sweet, adorable, innocent. And all alone.
The following scenes will have you internally screaming as Pihu (played by 2-year-old Myra Vishwakarma) proceeds to shut herself inside the fridge, heart-rendingly cries for her parents, tries to rouse her unresponsive mother, and drops multiple items including a cell phone, her milk bottle, and glass bottles. Everything that could possibly go wrong gleefully proceeds to do so, as successive shots show a smoking iron, food burning in the microwave, a two-year-old operating a gas burner (and lighting the chapatis on fire), and the geyser exploding into pieces. The trailer ends with her perched precariously on a balcony, all the signs pointing to her falling over it.
The edge-of-the-seat trailer (which has amassed over 1.6 million views since 36 hours of its release) also prompts intrigue as to how audiences will remain engaged in a 100-minute-film with the only character being a two-year-old. The movie is director Vinod Kapri’s second foray into film making, his debut feature being the critically acclaimed socio-legal satire Miss Tanakpur Haazir Ho. Pihu was shot in 2015, as he wanted to finish filming before Myra turned 3. To facilitate her acting process, three cameras would be placed at different angles, as they could not ask a toddler to do retakes. The film has received widespread appreciation in spaces like the Vancouver International Film Festival, Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran, and the Indian Film Festival in Stuttgart.
As for the rest of us commoners, we will have to wait till November 16 to see this true story unfold on our screens.
