A short Hindi documentary —‘AIDS awareness to the people’ — by an event manager from Surat has bagged an award in the special category on AIDS at the International short films festival in San Francisco.

Abhishek Galshar, who wrote and directed the 22-minute movie, said he came to know of the award on Monday when he received an email from festival organiser Michel Cherry.

Incidentally, this is his first venture at filmmaking.

The story is based on the real-life incident of a man who leaves his remote village in Rajasthan and goes to Mumbai for job. After getting a job at a private firm, he visits a red-light area; gets infected and eventually dies.

The film has been shot in Barmer district of Rajasthan and Mumbai.

Galshar said: “I got inspiration from a friend of my friend who died of AIDS. The film is based on the true story of that youth. It took one year to write the film’s script. We have showed the village life of India and the emotions of the man’s wife, the metropolitan life of Mumbai as also the well-established prostitution network, in the film.”

Ashok Patel, a Gujarati film and television serial artist, who plays the lead role, said: “Abhishek came up with the idea to make a short documentary on AIDS awareness. He is into event management in Surat. We discussed the story idea and he started writing on it. We have tried to describe the emotions of an Indian woman for her husband and what she does when she misses him; how the lead actor gets infected with AIDS after visiting a red-light area, among

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