Kalicharan: The Film That Waited Four Years

Kalicharan is a short film we shot in my village in January 2021, just after the lockdown. It sat forgotten for four years, and we finally released it on YouTube in October 2025.

This is the story of how a bunch of friends, a borrowed laptop and a lot of sleepless nights turned a lockdown picnic into a film. And how that film changed the way I see myself.

[Watch Kalicharan here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu7Zr3hyD3E&t=340s

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A lockdown picnic at the brick kiln

During the lockdown I was back in my village. So were many of my friends who work in cities like Bangalore and Mumbai. With no jobs to go back to, they started making bricks to earn something.

I had no work either, and sitting at home got boring fast. So I started going to the brick site with them, just to pass time. Sometimes I helped out, mostly I just chilled.

Honestly, it felt like a picnic. We ate together, drank together, cracked jokes all day, and bathed in the well or the pond. Somewhere in all that fun, a thought came to me: why not make a short film out of this?

Putting the team together

I narrated the story to my school friend Dinesh Sharma, and he wrote the screenplay.

For the camera, I called my bhanja (my didi's son). He was only 18 then, and his experience was in wedding videography. But he had his own equipment and a real sense of camera work for film. His work impressed me.

The cast came from the village itself. When we needed a lady for a scene, I requested my chachi. One character was played by my cousin, and he absolutely nailed it. The four main characters, including me, also did a decent job. None of us had faced a camera before, except me, and even I had only a little experience.

The shoot

We shot it documentary style and had a great time doing it. Since we had no proper lights, we shot mostly in daylight. One scene needed to go from day to night, and I fixed that later in post-production.

Our technology was limited, so the picture quality is low, and the sound and lighting fall short in a few scenes. But in script, story and acting, I truly believe it stands above many Bollywood films.

Lost and forgotten

After the shoot I came back to Mumbai and paid a friend who was learning editing to cut the film. He took some time, then told me he couldn't edit it because it wasn't a typical shoot. I tried a few other friends too, with no luck.

Slowly, Mumbai took over my life. Auditions, short films with FTII, the daily hustle of an actor. I forgot about Kalicharan. I even lost the footage I had with me.

Luckily, the director had kept a backup. By then, he had got a central government job in Jharsuguda, Odisha.

A stopover in Jharsuguda

In June 2025, I was shifting to Hyderabad to look for acting work in the Telugu industry. I couldn't find a direct ticket, so I booked a ticket to Jharsuguda and planned to go on to Hyderabad from there.

I stopped over at the director's place, and that is where the footage came back into my life. At first, I only thought of cutting a few reels for my account. But Dinesh pushed me to make the full short film, no matter how it turned out.

I wasn't convinced. Making a film costs money. But after some time, my vision shifted, and I decided to finish what we had started.

Seventeen nights

First, I needed a laptop. My roommate Mohan had a MacBook, so I asked him if I could use it at night after he went to sleep. He agreed.

My friend Pankaj Kumar had subscriptions to Suno AI and ElevenLabs, and he shared his account and credits with me. The entire background score was made with AI, and I generated some of the voices on ElevenLabs.

For about 17 nights, I did everything myself: editing, colour correction, BGM, titles and voice-over, with help from AI tools. I worked through the night, had breakfast, and slept around 7 or 8 in the morning.

Sujoy Kar, an editor and filmmaker, guided me along the way. After seeing three or four of my cuts, he realised I wasn't going to stop until this was the best version it could be. He taught me the finer details of editing and helped me look closely at the acting too.

Release and promotion

When the edit was done, I went back to my village for Durga Puja. We had sent the film to a few festivals, but they didn't take it, mostly because of the technical shortcomings. So we decided to release it on YouTube.

Then we put everything into promotion. I asked my friends in Mumbai and Hyderabad to watch it and record short bites about the film. We printed physical posters with a QR code linking to the film, went to malls, and personally requested people to watch it.

The film got decent views. But the views were never the real win.

From actor to maker

More than any number on YouTube, Kalicharan changed my mind. Before this film, I saw myself only as an actor. After it, I knew I was a maker too.

Since then, I have shot a short film professionally. That story deserves its own blog, so I'll tell you about it next time.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this, please like, share and leave a comment below.

Nishant Dhanaanjayy, Actor, Filmmaker