Kerala: Short film sheds light on online abuse of children

KOCHI

: Ever since an unprepared generation of parents and students were forced to shift to online education, concerns have been raised on the risk the internet may pose to children. ‘

Niha

’, a

short film

by Sreehari Rajesh, a Class XI student of Bhavan’s Vidya Mandir in Eroor on

online abuse of children

warns about the dangers of uploading materials to websites.

The film features Niha, a 15-year-old girl, who is tricked into sending her pictures to online predators who morph them and blackmail her for more images.

“I know personally of a few cases of students becoming the target of online abuse. In a couple of cases, the victims themselves sent their pictures falling for fake online lovers. That’s when I decided to make a short film which could be seen by all,” said 16-year-old Sreehari who shot the film with his DSLR camera.

The film revolves around Niha (played by

Neha Saji

) who gets a smartphone with the support of the PTA in her school and then gets hooked on to the social media. She gets calls from an online agency stating that they are taking special tuitions and she is added to a WhatsApp group. They request her to put her profile picture, which they morph and start blackmailing her.

Sreehari said after hearing about the short film’s theme, the Christ King Convent High School in Ponnurunni agreed to support him and gave him permission to use their campus for shooting. He roped in family friends to play the supporting roles in the film.

Sreehari’s first film, made in 2019, titled ‘

Puka

’–The Killing Smoke was aimed at spreading awareness against substance abuse among school students. The movie was launched by P Vijayan IPS and was screened at all police training camps and SPC camps in Kerala. ‘Hutch’, his next film made during the lockdown was about a kid stuck indoors, drawing comparison to a bird locked in a cage. While volunteering for the Nanma Foundation in distributing food during Covid lockdown, he made ‘Silent Roads’.

While making movies is a passion, he prefers to focus on spreading awareness on social issues, said Sreehari.