Priyanka Banerjee’s short film Devi, featuring an ensemble cast including Kajol, Neha Dhupia, and Shruti Haasan, is in hot water after a filmmaking student levelled allegations of plagiarism against it. Abhishek Rai, a student of Asian Academy of Film and Television in Noida, has claimed that it is identical to his five-and-a-half-minute film titled Four.
Devi showcases nine women from different strata of society living together and forming an unusual sisterhood over their shared trauma. The concept seems to be inspired from Four, which featured three rape victims, instead of nine. The ending is similar, as well.
Abhishek wrote in a Facebook post, “Here’s something I’d like to bring to everybody’s notice. We at AndaKurry Productions, made a short film when we were in film school, 2 years back called ‘FOUR’ that dealt with a premise of rape victims sitting together in a room when a new victim arrives. And yesterday, a film named ‘Devi’ was uploaded to LargeShortFilms’s YouTube channel that has heavy resemblance and the premise is also of the film we made.”
“Of course our film was a student film, with very little production design, bad audio and stuff, but still it’s a child of our own imagination and it’s ruthless how anyone can just pick up a piece of thought and claim it to be theirs. The film is an intellectual property of Asian Academy of Film & Television,” the note added.
Abhishek went on to say that he was not contacted by the makers of Devi and said that he was contemplating action against them.
Devi features also Neena Kulkarni, Mukta Barve, Sandhya Mhatre, Rama Joshi, Shivani Raghuvanshi and Yashaswini Dayama. The short film was unveiled at a screening on Monday, which was attended by a number of Bollywood celebrities, including Karan Johar and Sonali Bendre, reports Hindustan Times.
