Filmi take on what ails education system

On one hand, a reality which stares at us is students committing suicide, and on the other is an unjust educational system that only looks to complete its syllabus on time and with sheer numbers as the parameter for success. The moment one thinks of competition, one naturally pictures the rat race for marks and jobs. Keeping in mind these issues, Ananth Mahadevan has come up with his new film, Rough Book. The film captures the journey of a physics teacher Santoshi Kumari  and her class 12, section D students considered ‘duffers’, and their rebellion against the system and its preconceived notions.

Mahadevan describes it as an attempt to address some of the issues like poaching of teachers or coaching in school premises through the eyes of a teacher. “It was like opening up a can of worms and looking inside the teacher-student psyche and showcasing it interestingly on screen. I had to push my boundaries as a director,” he tells Metrolife.

Producer Aakash Chaudhary, director of Aakash Education Services Pvt Ltd says, “The movie has been produced with lot of real life experiences, incidences which we have faced as an education company in the last 27 years. We closely watched the issues that the parents, teachers and the students face. I think it was an attempt to showcase and highlight these issues point-blank and give a solution as to how to handle them.”

Chaudhary pushed the thought behind Rough Book, after recognising real life issues of mandatory coaching classes, teachers who work overtime, segregation of students as good and ‘duffer’ and the economics that rule managements in education institutes, as a hurdle to students’ knowledge growth.

Featuring Tannishtha Chatterjee, Amaan F Khan, Kaizaad Kotwal and Ram Kapoor as the principle cast, the film portrays the idea of today’s tech-savvy youth who need guidance. Chaudhary tells Metrolife, “In this digital age when students think they don’t need a mentor and Internet is good enough, it is an attempt to highlight some of these issues. We have been doing this in our seminars but we thought that if it had to reach large masses, a movie was an  apt vehicle for us.”

Bringing the 3 E’s together – educate, empower and entertain, the film was named the Best Feature at the Houston Film Festival and was also selected for screening on the closing night of the DFW South Asian Film Festival among other nominations.