Frayed Lines: Priya Belliappa’s award-winning short film is now available to stream

Kannada filmmaker Priya Belliappa’s short film Frayed Lines was the winner of the Best film in the Kannada competition section at the 2020 Bengaluru International short film festival. Set in a coffee plantation in Kodagu, the film is a subtle conversation about the lives of the marginalised - the people who live on the peripherals, their everyday lives and their boundaries. Amidst the burgeoning crisis of immigration and unemployment, two individuals who don’t speak a common language connect while working on a coffee plantation.

Priya has been quoted as saying that she had conceived Frayed Lines as a feature film, but then decided to make it a short instead. Shot in two languages, the film stars Avinash Mudappa as Kalappa, who despite being a graduate is forced to work on the coffee estate earning as little as Rs 2.50 per kilo of bean that he gathers, while Geetanjali Thapa’s Tabu is a migrant worker from Assam, who has a ticket to go back home, but is not sure what future awaits her as her name is not on the updated draft of the NRC. The film, said Priya is about what migrant workers face in terms of citizenship and sense of belonging. The story was based on their experiences, making language, migration, citizenship and even unemployment the major talking points of the film. Like, for instance, when Kalappa wonders what his grandmother would think of the fact that people with PhDs are queueing up for peon jobs, as she believes that he ought to do better and not manual labour, or when Tabu asks how she will prove her nationality with no birth certificate or details of her birth parents, for that matter.

The film, which did the rounds of festivals across the globe, is now available to stream for free on YouTube. You can watch Frayed Lines here: