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Short film
Poster for The One Who Plays

The One Who Plays

2025 · 27 min

A quiet, heavy-hearted short that sits with a child's hope as it is slowly crushed by inherited cruelty.

Directed by
Shobhita Thakur
Overview
Sapna, a 12-year-old girl from the denotified Banchhada caste of Madhya Pradesh (India), dreams of becoming a doctor, inspired by the confidence of a lady doctor who works at the village primary healthcare clinic. However, her dreams are crushed by her community's generational tradition of caste-based prostitution, where girls are forced into the trade to fund their brothers' marriages and run the household.
How it feels
Bleak, melancholic, earnest and tense. Measured and needs your attention.
About
Class, gender, family, survival
Content
Mild violence, sexual content and language. No gore.
Note
Written by AI, so it can be wrong. Full breakdown

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Directed by
Shobhita Thakur
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How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Full breakdown
Tone
Pacing
measured, 2 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention
engaged, 3 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Era
contemporary
Audience
teen
Form
None
Content intensity
  • Gore none
  • Language mild
  • Violence mild
  • Sex mild
All scales, 0 to 10
Scales, 0 to 10
ScaleValue0 to 10
Action1
Horror2
Humour1
Realism9
Romance0
Tension6
Darkness8
Complexity5
Emotional weight9

Cast

Where to watch in the US

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No streaming, rental or purchase options are known in the US.

Streaming data from JustWatch.TMDB

Details

Directed by
Shobhita Thakur
Written by
Shobhita Thakur
Starring
Jahnav Rane, Richa Gupta, Devraj Joshi, Hima Singh, Trishaan CSA
Runtime
27 min
Country
India, United Kingdom
Languages
Hindi

TMDB