This 14-year-old made a short film capturing the city of Kochi amid the pandemic

Empty street corners, silent tourist spots, and congestion-free roads became a common sight amid the coronavirus pandemic. Since the lockdown made it imperative for people across the country to stay indoors, urban spaces began to bear a deserted look.

While most citizens stayed restrained to their homes, Sreehari Rajesh, a 14-year-old boy from Kerala, stepped out of his comfort zone to shoot and edit a documentary titled, 'Silent Roads.' Entirely captured while travelling with his father on the roads of Kochi to supply food to the needy, this was not Sreehari’s first filming experience. 

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“Everyone has seen the busy roads of Kochi. So, I planned to show the empty ones of the district to the people. I shot it on my mobile phone and named it Silent Roads,” Sreehari told ANI. 

He made the film while serving the community as part of the Nanma Foundation — a social initiative started by the Kerala Police in Kochi.

Previously, Sreehari had put together a bilingual short film called, 'Puka - The Killing Smoke.' The 33-minute-long cinema cautions children against the consumption of drugs and tobacco. Besides writing the story and directing the film, Sreehari also played a role in it. 

The 14-year-old has also made two other socially relevant films in the past, namely 'Cover' (to raise awareness about proper waste disposal), and 'Chatti' (to show the harmful effects of plastic).

“Instead of filming something random, I like doing something useful for the public. This pushed me to take up ‘awareness’ as the main theme in my work,” Sreehari said in one of his earlier interviews with The New Indian Express. 

A native of the Ernakulam area in the city of Kochi, Sreehari studies at Bhavans Vidya Mandir at Eloor. 

"I am planning to do a project on traffic violations named 'Alarm of Life,' which shows traffic rule violations. There is a huge support from my family for this," Sreehari said, as reported by Edexlive.