“O Mother” – a Film on AIDS and Motherhood

Pocket Films, known for bringing short films to the forefront, is here with a film titled “O Mother”, an attempt by director Prashant Bhagia to spread awareness about women with AIDS. The mother-child bond is explored through the eyes of an HIV positive woman and her baby in a sensitive manner that makes the viewer empathise with women with AIDS, while creating awareness at the same time.

The film opens with a helpless mother who sees her hungry baby crying, but doesn’t come forward to breast feed him. Why would a mother do such a thing? The film raises many such questions in a viewer’s mind before revealing the cause of her helplessness – she is HIV positive, and hence has to refrain from breast feeding to avoid passing the virus to her baby through breast milk.

“A silent film in today’s time,’O Mother’ very deftly handles an unspoken and pertinent facet of AIDS. In just a few minutes, the reality about an HIV positive mother’s situation shakes up the viewer. Words fall short to describe her pain when she helplessly sees her little child crying out of hunger,” Sameer Mody, managing director of Pocket Films, said in a statement.

Bhagia believes that “O Mother” is not just a film but a “social message to every individual, portrayed through the world’s most selfless and unconditional bond, that of a mother and child”.  “I felt the best way to spread knowledge on AIDS to millions of people at the same time is through a short film,” he added. (IANS)