From cyber to cinema: Professor's debut film tackles disability and belonging
UNSW Institute for Cybersecurity
After a real-life encounter, Professor Sanjay Jha has written, directed and produced a film.
A cyber security expert trained in engineering and artificial intelligence has channeled that mindset into a deeply human story about disability and belonging.
Professor Sanjay Jha, a member of the UNSW Institute for Cyber Security (IFCyber) from the School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), wrote, directed, and produced Abhivyakti (Finding Their Voice), a Maithili-language drama set in rural India, a language spoken by over 20 million people in Indian state of Bihar and Nepal.
At its centre is Kanti, who returns to her family's village to have her first child. When her daughter Chutki is born, the family reacts with disappointment over not having a son. That disappointment curdles into stigma once Chutki is diagnosed with significant hearing loss.
The film follows Kanti's stubborn fight against the future the society has already written for her daughter.
A screenplay devised on a flight from India to Australia, Prof Jha said the film was born from a real encounter.
At a family gathering in India, he met a deaf-mute man in his 30s who had received no medical support or intervention. That moment sparked the idea of raising awareness about disability.
"His life wasn't particularly good," Prof Jha said.
"I tried to explore whether he could get an implant, but it was a bit too late. That was a trigger point for me, and that's where I started thinking about raising awareness around disability."
Describing himself as curious with a brain that's "too charged", Prof Jha took a summer film course at the Australian Film, Television and Radio Institute in 2016. He's also taken golf lessons, learned to play the tabla (an Indian drum), had lessons in Indian vocal singing, and is an eager artist.
He even used his own artwork in the film – several of his portraits feature in the closing credits, also inspired by a childlike sketch of UNSW's Quadrangle, spotted on a PhD student's desk.
"There's a scene where the girl draws a building across the pond ... showing her potential beyond art," he said.
"One day leaving my office at UNSW, I saw a painting on a PhD student’s desk – a very basic child-style drawing of the Quad building, with imperfect colours. I took a photo of it, and that style ended up in the film.
"As a filmmaker you keep observing – you never know what will come in handy."
With no funding and no prior filmmaking experience, Prof Jha assembled a local cast of theatre actors some of them with prior experience in Indie films.
He ran casting calls over WhatsApp from Sydney in the evenings to match the time difference in India, and eventually engaged a professional team in Mumbai that included editors from Netflix and graduates from the Film and Television Institute of India to do professional post production work.
"Something in me wanted to make a film, I can't really explain it," he said. He has long been drawn to photography and design.
"I don't think I had any training in arts, or acting, or theatre in school or college days. So it was very surprising to myself that I'd want to make a film – but I did."
While the film is set in India, Prof Jha said the issues it raised – social stigmas around disability, tensions between hearing implants and deaf community's identity, and bullying in schools – is not uniquely Indian.
He pointed to real conversations with Australian families of deaf children and with other disabilities that helped shape the film, along with a Sydney viewer who deeply connected with the film despite the setting. His experience supporting students and staff facing disability at UNSW had already sharpened his empathy; making the film deepened it.
"Australia has a lot of good resources, and people typically get supported if they're eligible for a hearing implant – there's a lot of government support for that, which is positive," he said.
"But social issues remain global – discrimination, integration – it's a problem in Australia and many other countries. It might be at a different level, but it's there: it's global."
While filmmaking and cyber security might seem worlds apart, he sees the disciplines as more alike than they first appear.
"Cyber security is a discipline that has an engineering component as well as social aspects – filmmaking is a big project management exercise too," he said.
"There are so many aspects, and if you want to be a good professional you need to look across various areas. So in that sense there's similarity."
That analytical training also shaped how he approached the screenplay.
"I think people underestimate how much logic goes into writing a screenplay or making a film. It's very easy to break the logic," he said.
"Having a cybersecurity and ICT (Information and Communications Technology) background helped me personally focus on that part a lot more."
The film is awaiting a screening decision from the Melbourne Indian Film Festival, expected in mid-to-late July, and has an application pending with Waves OTT, the Indian Government’s streaming platform.
Prof Jha hopes to screen the film at UNSW and potentially in Canberra, and is open to SBS as an Australian broadcast option. A second film – on a different social theme – is already in early development.
"At the end of the day I want people to watch the film," he said, "so we'll see."
Contact details:
Kyle Mackey-Laws
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Professor Sanjay Jha on the set of Abhivyakti (Finding Their Voice) Image: Moonlit Films
