PAANI a short movie written & directed by Amardeep Singh Gill

What did Amardeep Singh Gill say about this film?

Why did I make “Paani”?

Cinema is my whole life, feature films are my life and short films are a dream! We dream and then try to make it come true. I often tell my colleagues that “Feature films are like arranged marriages where everyone has to do their part, the groom only has to sit on the horse or on a chair, while short films are like love marriages, the maker has to do everything himself, like the groom getting a love marriage, even if he have to buy the clothes for himself, even arrange the other stuff for wedding himself.

Today, I am a successful filmmaker, in the last ten years I have made three feature films, three web series, six short films in Punjabi, before that I worked as a writer, poet and lyricist. Four books of my poems, one song and one feature film script have been published in Punjabi. Many of my songs have been sung by Punjabi singers, one of which is “Ih Jo Sillhi Sillhi Aaundi Ae Hawa!” sung by Padma Shri Hans Raj Hans's and it voice is still heard all over the world even though it was released exactly twenty-five years ago today. I am a lyricist, a poet, a script writer, an actor, but my main goal was to become a film director, which I did at the age of fifty. My first Punjabi feature film was “Jora Das Numbariya”. This film was released in 2017 and was a completely different kind of film among the Punjabi comedy films being made at that time. This film was very popular in Punjab and my identity became what I wanted to make with this film. I wanted people to understand me and my cinema differently. They started understanding me with this film. Even today my path is the most unique among the rest of Punjabi cinema.\

My films are of some kind. I do not make films just to earn money or just to entertain. My aim is to express my feelings in a fun way through films. My films are of my own, real and hard hitting, that is what people say about my films. As a filmmaker, I now want to make films in Hindi as well as in Marathi. I also like the cinema of Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, Raj Khosla and on the other hand I also like the art-cinema of Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Mrinal Sen, Mira Nair. Among the latter filmmakers, Rajkumar Santoshi, J. P. Dutta, Ram Gopal Varma, Mani Ratnam, Bala, Anurag Kashyap, Abhishek Dubey, Vishal Bhardwaj, Neeraj Ghewan, Hansal Mehta, Anubhav Sinha, Vikramaditya Motwane and Kanu Behal. I have always considered myself a student of cinema and I will always remain a student. Among foreign filmmakers, I like many filmmakers like Zafar Panahi, Majid Majidi, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Sergio Leone, Frank Darabont, Coppola, James Cameron, Edward Zwick, MEL GIBSON.

Today, of course, I am making feature films or web series, but I cannot keep myself away from short films. Whenever I get time and whenever I have a producer, I start making short films. Through short films, I can do a lot of things in a short amount of time, which can be easily shared with the whole world by going to film festivals or through the internet. “Paani” is also such a film which is based on a true incident. This incident took place in the post-nineteenth century Punjab, which we call the era of militancy and the state media calls it the era of extremism.

During this period, many things happened that are still hidden from the eyes of the common people. They neither entered the official records nor became a part of the history of Punjab, but all of them were very painful. I have tried to share a small moment of this painful but hidden history with you through this short film. Kul Sidhu, Sharan Dhaliwal, Amritpal Singh Bhalla, Jeet, Satwant Kaur, Talwinder Singh Bhullar, Mani Kular, Sharanjit Ratol, Indarjit, Sharan Dhillon, Simarpal, Jaswant Singh Jhajj, Kewal Kranti, Vadda etc. are its actors. Jaswant Singh Jhajj is also the producer of this film. The camera is by Ankit Chopra. The background music is by Prashant Kamble. Before this film, I had done a film on Punjab's famous TV channel P. T. C. Made for Punjabi, this film was called “Raat”, this film was also a story of the human impact of the wave of “militancy” caused by the illegal political conditions deliberately created in Punjab in the nineteen eighties.