Mumbai-based director’s movie selected for screening at the New York India Film Festival

A scene from the film where Aden and Freddie are at their empathetic neighbour’s home

It's essentially a love story, but not the sort where the boy gets the girl. Instead, Freddie's Piano - an English movie that Mumbai-based Aakash Prabhakar has directed, which has now been selected for screening at the New York India Film Festival (NYIFF) in the US next month - is a heartwarming tale about the unwavering affection that two orphaned brothers have for each other. Their names are Freddie and Aden. Freddie is 12 years old, Aden is in his early 20s, and the fact that they are actually half-brothers doesn't matter at all. It doesn't diminish their mutual love even one bit because they realise that at the end of the day, the unsullied filial bond they share is the only real succour they can get after losing their parents to an accident.

The story itself is set in a Tamil-Christian household in Puducherry. That's where the brothers live, in a house that their father just about managed to pay the loan off for before he passed away. But in doing so, he left very little in the bank for the two siblings. Aden struggles to even pay the meagre fare for the school bus that picks up Freddie every morning. It leads to a certain despondency in him. He is worried about his little brother's future. But what he is especially worried about - and this is where the crux of the plot lies - is that he doesn't have the money to help Freddie pursue his piano lessons, which is the one dream that the child has, the one dream that his late father, too, had for him.

Aakash Prabhakar as Aden and Pranav Mylarassu as Freddie

Freddie, on the other hand, is battling his own demons. He thinks that he is an undue burden on Aden, inadvertently entrusting him with the responsibilities of taking care of a 12-year-old too early in life. Freddie feels that he is clipping his big brother's wings, that Aden would be happier taking a flight to Paris and finding a job there since he has a French passport (as is the case with many Puducherry residents). And the resolution of this internal conflict that the two brothers have - which is born out of pure love and longing for each other - forms the basis of the narrative.

Pranav Mylarassu, the 12-year-old who plays Freddie, encapsulates this conflict when he tells us about why the character he plays in the film wanted to move to Chennai to live with his Pati, or mother's mother, who Aden is not technically related to. The student of AR Rahman's KM Music Conservatory in Chennai says, "Pati is rich. Her family is well off too. So, you tell me. Would Freddie want to be a burden on Aden? Or would he want to go and live with Pati so that Aden can follow his dream?"

It's a tough choice, if you think about it, because it involves sacrifice. Prabhakar, who plays Aden, explains, "Objectively, it [Freddie living with Pati] makes sense. Why does a 24-year-old have to take care of his 12-year-old brother? The obvious choice is for Aden to leave Freddie with his grandmother. But, neither of them wants that to happen. There is no one else they have, despite great friends. And there is a scene in a cemetery where Aden realises about Freddie that no matter what happens, he will not let this guy go."

His modus operandi - to not let Freddie go - is to buy him a piano for Christmas, since Pati having the instrument at home is the excuse that the younger brother used while proposing the shift to Chennai. Except, there's a hitch. A piano costs '5 lakh. Aden can't even conceive of that sort of money at the moment, though he tries different avenues to secure it. But does he succeed? Well, the answer to that question would mean revealing too much of the plot. So, we'll leave you instead with the storyline of The Gift of the Magi, a short story by O Henry, which is referenced in the movie. It features a couple, where the woman visits a hairdresser on Christmas Eve to sell off her long hair and buy her partner a platinum chain for his watch as a present. But ironically, she later finds out that her husband had sold his watch to buy her a comb, which she can't use anymore. Neither of them thus got what they wanted. But they had what they needed - each other.
Watch Freddie's Piano to find out how that same moral ties up with the film.

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