The first look poster of Peekaboo, the upcoming Hindi short film, written and directed by debutant filmmaker Shamal Chacko, was released by the makers of the film on social media on Friday.
Peekaboo, which is also edited and produced by Chacko, under the Kahaani Pictures banner, is a horror-thriller, the filmmaker tells Silverscreen India.
He adds that the 10-minute-long film “is a humble attempt to challenge the fear in people.”
The featurette revolves around Raavi, a cheerful, high-spirited girl living in a convent hostel that is infamous for girls dying by suicide. “One night, Raavi is confronted by a sister for arriving late and she is thrown into a game of hide-and-seek. The story will be in a time loop — at the beginning, we have the end card, and vice versa.”
Peekaboo was shot over the course of a day. “The story is set in Panaji, but we filmed it in Mattancherry, Kochi. We shot in the same house where Charlie was filmed. I chose it because, in Charlie, they had shown the house in a magical way, but I wanted to shoot a horror film there,” says Chacko, who has previously worked as associate under editors Appu Bhattathiri and Aravind Manmadhan.
While the team is from Kerala, Peekaboo has been made in Hindi. “I thought Hindi was the best language to tell this story as it is set in Goa. Though there are many churches in Kerala, the Anglo-Indian textures of Goan churches were essential to my story. Our main artist, Raavi Kishor, is from Goa as well.”
Chacko says he wants to experiment with filmmaking across languages, adding that he is planning his debut feature film in Malayalam and is assisting a friend with the script of a Tamil film.
The makers announced that Peekaboo will stream on multiple OTT platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Hungama Play, and MX Player. “Usually short films are released on YouTube, but we wanted to redefine this. Also, many people don’t know that big platforms are looking to release short films too. We pitched to Amazon and iTunes through an agency, while for MX Player and Hungama, we directly contacted them,” says Chacko.
He adds that Peekaboo is releasing in 23 countries on Prime and 73 countries on iTunes. “The release date has not been confirmed, but it will stream sometime in July.”
