DOSH (Trailer) from Radha Mehta on Vimeo.

Sometimes the best way for people to save themselves and their families, both mentally and physically, is to fight back against cultural taboos regarding their health. That’s certainly the case for actress Renu Razdan’s protagonist of Karishma in the new short film, ‘Dosh,’ which means both flaw and fault in Hindi.

The drama is an immigrant story about love and family as Karishma determinedly fights to overcome cultural taboos around the mental health and physical disability that are plaguing her family. As a Hard-of-Hearing South Asian woman with a husband who is living with undiagnosed bipolarism, Karishma does whatever it takes to treat them both, in order to protect their son.

In ‘Dosh,’ Karishma finds her son, Rishi (Tyler Anton) out of bed one late night, swimming with her husband, Ram (Nikhil Prakash). Concerned, she believes this is another one of Ram’s recent unpredictable behaviors.

Against Ram’s wishes, Karishma decides to secretly speak up and seek help from her visiting mother-in-law, Shilpa (Mona Sishodia), during her sister-in-law’s pre-wedding ceremony. But just like Ram, Shilpa quickly denies he’s sick, and even blames Karishma for his condition.

As a result of his wife’s conversation with his mother, Ram confronts Karishma. When his new episode also leads to the near death of their son in a drowning, she finally stands her ground to protect her family and help Ram seek the help he so needs.

The movie was co-written by Radha Mehta and Noorah Al-Eidi. Mehta also directed the ‘Dosh.’ Besides Razdan, Prakash, Anton and Sishodia, the short also stars Asit Vyas, Neel Agrawal, Nadine Naidoo, Shristi Birla and Oscar nominee Dev Patel.

‘Dosh’ was screened in the Unstoppable Shorts Series at last month’s Slamdance Film Festival, the first of which was sold out when it played on January 20 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Park City – The Yarrow. During the festival, Mehta received the George Starks Spirit of Slamdance Award during an awards ceremony held on January 25 at The Yarrow.

Mehta generously took the time to talk about co-scribing and helming ‘Dosh’ during an exclusive interview over Zoom before the project’s Slamdance screenings. Among other things, the filmmaker discussed how personal events in her own life inspired her to make the drama. She also mentioned that she appreciates how Slamdance has been supportive of the movie from the moment she received the call that it was accepted into the festival.

Film Factual (FF): You co-wrote the script for the new short film, ‘Dosh,’ with Noorah Al-Eidi. What was your inspiration in penning the screenplay, and what was the process like in crafting the story and characters, together?

Radha Mehta (RM): The film is based on personal events that have happened in my own life. My true inspiration is really just wanting to somewhat dismantle these taboos within my South Asian culture, when it comes to mental health and disability.

It’s something that I’ve grown up in. I feel we don’t talk enough about this openly because it’s so taboo. A lot of people within my diaspora, who have any kind of disability – in my case, I’m Hard of Hearing – or have any kind of mental health challenges, such as bipolarism, don’t talk about it; we, in fact, hide it. What ends up happening is that many folks within my diaspora end up suffering really negative consequences from it, due to the shame that we feel throughout our lives.

So I just wanted to be able to incorporate specific events that have happened in my life into the film. It’s great to do it in a narrative form because you can create a specific character arc, as well as a story arc that hopefully feels true to life. But at the same time, I didn’t want it to be the same exact experience that I’ve I had in my life.

FF: Besides scribing the script, you also directed the drama. How did writing the screenplay influence your helming style throughout the production? How did you approach your overall directorial duties while you were shooting the movie?

RM: I was very fortunate to have a co-writer involved. This film is an MFA thesis film, so every key principal within the team is a fellow from AFI, and we’ve all since graduated.

My co-writer, Noorah Al-Eidi, is from Saudi Arabia. So her cultural upbringing is actually very similar to mine. We share a lot of similarities.

So, I had the fortunate experience of working with her in my first year on a different project. I just love the vibe that we have, and I feel like she’s a soul sister of mine. So when I shared with her this idea for the story, she helped a great deal, in terms of putting structure around it.

Once the structure was there, we then just fine tuned it to a degree with the rest of our team. A lot of times, the first drafts are very expositional. So then we worked really well together, in terms of figuring out how can we see this, as opposed to saying it.

So by the end of it, I really tried to minimize as much dialogue as possible, and have it be more experiential. I think that she and I worked really well together, in terms of making that happen. In the final film, there’s only 12 lines of dialogue in a 16-minute film.

But directing is the discipline that I specifically trained in. I love actors so much. These actors were people that I had known before. I’m a big proponent of trying to lift South Asian talent in whatever way I can, including telling other people about them.

I was fortunate to work with at least one of these key leads before. We had a specific relationship where, when we spoke through the story, I came in with my specific experiences that I had.

But then I wanted to hear how they related to their characters, and what experiences that they’ve had in their life that can relate to this film. I wanted to tap into that as much as possible. I felt like that’s what I needed to be able to direct them and to have them give their best performances, in the way they thought was authentic to the story.

I just love directing so much, and it was just we had a blast. We still talk about it to this day, in terms of the experience that we had in rehearsal, as well as when we were actually filming the scenes.

FF: Speaking about the actors, what was the casting process like for ‘Dosh?’

RM: Tyler is an absolute rock star. I had developed a strong relationship with his mom and him. I went to their house beforehand to talk to them about the story.

I said that a big item within this film and what this character would have to do is swim. We actually filmed this at a very cold time in Los Angeles. It’s funny to say that it ever gets cold in L.A., but it does. It was in November, and these were all night scenes, so of course, it definitely gets chilly then.

But Tyler was incredible to work with, as he had no problem swimming; he loved swimming. But I still felt like it was a bit of a challenging circumstance for him anyway, just given that swimming in cold circumstances is hard. So I just really appreciate how dedicated him and his parents were, in terms of making the swimming pool scene work.

I feel he’s definitely wiser beyond his years. I felt lucky to cast someone that’s older that can look young, because he was meant to look like a 10-year-old, and I think he’s 12. So it just worked out that he was able to understand acting language and also my ability to direct.

The other thing I learned from this process, which I hope to get to do more often, is when you’re directing kids, sometimes you just have to speak with them as if adults do to one another, and not talk to them like little kids. I think that at his age, he was able to get my direction pretty well, without me having to speak to me the way I would speak to my two kids – I have a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old. I was really appreciative of that. I would say it’s challenging, but I would love to do it again.

FF: The short is partially set in part in the family’s home and swimming pool where Ram and Rishi swim, like you mentioned earlier. What was the process like of deciding where you shoot the film, as well as creating the production design for the project?

RM: Thank you for asking that. I had been location scouting just online, sifting through so many different places. I had a long list of places that I wanted to go check out with my team.

There’s this one location that I was really drawn to, in terms of the windows. I liked how you can see into the pool from a different angle from each room.

That mattered for the kind of shots that I had in mind. I remember calling my DP (Director of Photography), Isue Shin, and saying, “Hey, do you want to go with me somewhere today? I want to try something out.”

She was like, “Sure,” and she didn’t even ask what we were doing. It wasn’t an official location scout or anything, but I said, “Just ride with me and then we can talk about the story.”

I ended up asking this this particular home’s owner if I could come stop by and visit. I wanted to see if maybe we could just do a four-hour shoot there just to see what that location was like.

He was like, “Sure, yeah, we have availability in the next few weeks. So just come by.” So Isue and I went there, and we felt like that house was perfect, and like the story was actually written for that house design.

So we stuck with that and mentioned it to the rest of our team. They felt pretty good about that house as well. So the location part ended up becoming easy to some degree.

My producer, Gabriel Gutierrez, really worked hard to make sure that everything was smooth while we were filming. That way we could just focus on the actual film itself while he took care of all the rest of the logistics.

Once we secured the house, we worked with our production designer, Sandra B. Rodriguez, who is truly, in my opinion, so brilliant. I’m so blessed to have worked with her. I know that she has a great future ahead of her.

She’s not Indian, but she took on my world better than I could. She really dived into the research and prepared these lookbooks of what this world would look like, just in the scene of a party.

The ritual is a pre-wedding ritual where we apply turmeric on our faces as a form of cleansing before we get married. It’s meant to be a very intimate ceremony amongst family and very close friends in my Gajapati culture.

So she really looked into that. She looked at a past video of mine that I had when I had my pithy. She built a whole world around that. Her sketches ended up becoming so true to life.

She was able to work with her art director, who is Indian, to really craft this specific world within this house. She went to the specific artists and the Indian shops to be able to get the garlands and everything that we would typically use in our wedding decorations. So she was very lovely for me to work with, in terms of building this all.

FF: Like you mentioned earlier, the project is an American Film Institute Conservatory Thesis Film, and every key principal within the team is a fellow from AFI. What was your experience of collaborating on the project with AFI, which produced the movie?

RM: So our second year is typically just focused on thesis films, whereas our first year, we do so many back-to-back films. That’s part of the AFI Conservatory process, in which we shoot short films back-to-back.

Those films have high production value. But they’re not films that we could ever really show outside of that world because they’re meant for us to learn from, and even fail.

Through that whole first year, you get an idea of who you vibe with. That helps you in terms of who you choose to, and really want to, work with for future projects, specifically the thesis.

So after that, I knew exactly who I wanted to work with. I was fortunate to get every single principal team member that I wanted.

We were the first team to actually shoot for our year. So we really didn’t have any other precedents or any other teams to follow, in terms of lessons learned. So we had to just figure it out ourselves, and I’m grateful for that.

I think it’s because of my relationships with each of the principal team members, and also us just going first, that we were able to bond. We were also able to set our own ways of how we wanted to collaborate. We were also able to make it the best film that we possibly could, in the way we wanted to.

Also, I like to be very transparent sometimes with every principal team member. So I’m the most active person on our WhatsApp group chat, even to this day. (Mehta laughs.) I give them updates all the time about everything.

But I just know transparency is key. I also know that making sure that we’re all on the same page at all times is important. I do hold pretty frequent meetings. But that’s only because I feel that if there’s any doubt or confusion, I would much rather over communicate than not.

I just want to make sure that on the days on set, because there’s a limited time and time is money, that we are all in line and we know exactly what we want to do. I feel that that’s what led to a rather smooth production.

Of course, there are always unexpected things that can happen. I think because of the way our entire principal team prepped together, we were ready for those unforeseen circumstances. Then we were able to pivot pretty easily and naturally, so that we were still able to get the story that we wanted to tell.

FF: ‘Dosh’ (screened) in the Unstoppable Shorts Series at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival 2024. What does I mean to you that the drama played at the festival?

RM: I am so excited that we got into Slamdance. We’ve been fortunate to have played at a few other festivals before this one that are largely of the South Asian community, and we’ve received awards, which we’re grateful for.

So now it’s going beyond our diaspora. That’s a huge deal for me because that was always my intention – to be able to share this at a grander scale.

Slamdance has been nothing but supportive. They’ve just been so incredibly welcoming to me, especially withing the Unstoppable program. From the day that I got the call from the two founders of that program, I’ve just been so excited.

Given how amazing this platform is, I really hope that it sheds light on this film, and get as many eyeballs as possible to see it. Hopefully the story will resonate with audiences, given it’s so personal to me.

But I’m also very cautious and careful with myself to not set any expectations. In he future, I don’t want to feel like I failed, as right now I feel pretty proud of this film that my team and I made.

So we all (went to the festival); there (were) a total of 12 of us from our team and cast for the opening premiere of this film at Slamdance. I (stayed) there until the end of the festival. I (knew) Park City has specific vibrations, in terms of the energy, and I feel like that’s the best way to start this year. (Mehta laughs.)