Kaushal Oza’s moving and layered short film The Miniaturist of Junagadh transports Stefan Zweig’s short story Der Unsichtbare Sammlung (The Invisible Collection) to Partition-era India. Starring Naseeruddin Shah, Rasika Dugal, Raj Arjun and Padmavati Rao, The Miniaturist of Junagadh is out on the Large Short Films YouTube channel.
A Muslim family is preparing to migrate to Pakistan. The new house owner Kishorilal (Raj Arjun) arrives to take possession of the house and everything in it. Kishorilal is a bigot with scant respect for the trauma of the family members and their agony at being forced to uproot themselves.
When Noor (Rasika Dugal) requests that her blind father Husyn (Naseeruddin Shah), an acclaimed miniaturist painter, be allowed to take along some of his works, Kishorilal’s eyes shine with greed. The story behind Noor’s plea talks to the experiences of Muslims in India back in the 1940s as well as in the present.