Duel for a Dimtoast
Or, The Birth of a True Believer.
Short Film · 2024 · North Kolkata
Director
Rohit Chakraborty
Format
Short Film
Year
2024
Award
Jury's Choice · DSPFF 2024
The Film
An ageing balloon seller, bewildered by the monstrous growls of his stomach, stumbles upon a group of kids who feed themselves by stealing funeral offerings. Hardened by the cruelties of survival, these kids have become ruthless. On sensing the unassuming balloon seller, they attack him with insolent remarks and bully him away for being obsolete. He escapes and goes into a shop to satiate his hunger — but before he could take a bite of his egg toast, the kids reappear, demanding their share.
This ensues a duel between the hungry, that brings out the true violence hidden behind the benevolent façade of the balloon seller. Stripped bare of his illusions and defences, he finds himself standing at the precipice of surrender, relinquishing everything he once held dear.
Children who feed themselves on funeral offerings. Hardened by survival, they had become ruthless.
Still · Duel for a Dimtoast
Director's Statement
I chose to direct this film to understand what it means to be responsible for someone else's hunger, and what a person will do when that hunger meets his own.
I wrote the script in a fury. Called in every favor I had. We scoured the streets of Kolkata for days, looking for the right people for the parts. Found the kids in the slums of North Kolkata — and knew immediately.
We shot on borrowed equipment, sourcing everything we could from friends and colleagues. Tight budget. Total commitment. The elaborate plan didn't suit the location, so we found one long take that ran with the kids, and the camera became one of them.
In the edit, the storyboard led the film nowhere. I scrapped it, started fresh with no plan, and let the story arrange itself, the way it had on set. That's when the film started working.
The final film turned out very different from the script. Because in its making, it grew up with me.
The Dimtoast is an egg toast. The duel is real. What you take from it — that's yours.
The Film
Watch It Now
Short Film · North Kolkata, 2024.
A duel between the hungry — and the violence hidden behind a benevolent face.
Still · Duel for a Dimtoast
Production
— Shot on location in the streets and slums of North Kolkata.
— A shoestring budget. Every piece of equipment borrowed from friends and colleagues.
— Non-professional cast found after days of searching — children from the slums of North Kolkata, and an ageing local balloon seller.
The Dimtoast is an egg toast. The duel is real. What you take from it — that's yours.
Still · Duel for a Dimtoast
Festival Selections
About the Director
Rohit Chakraborty studied Journalism, then spent most of college in the media lab making experimental shorts and cutting found footage, working out how a story gets put together. Editing, cinematography and sound design pulled him in one by one, and he has been building from all three ever since.
Upon graduating, he began editing and shooting independent films, documentaries, travel and corporate projects. The feature documentary he shot and edited, In Their Own Time, premiered at the Coliseum International Film Festival Rome in 2023.
He makes films about people the camera usually walks past, so that strangers can feel each other's pain and each other's joy as if it were their own.
Duel for a Dimtoast is his directorial debut, now on his channel, One Good Eye.
Meant to follow you home.
Still · Duel for a Dimtoast