Sumit Kumar in Bhagalpur on Friday. Picture by Amit Kumar

Bhagalpur boy Sumit Kumar (37), whose short film won a certificate of excellence award at the second Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival-2013, is hungry for more movies on ignored social issues.

His nine-minute short Hindi film, Bhookh (Hunger) was placed at the 20th position at the festival where he was honoured on the concluding day, December 14. Talking to The Telegraph at his home in Tilkamanjhi, he said he tries to project society’s crude reality.

Bhook dwelt on the life of a poor slum teen struggling to arrange food for his dying mother. The protagonist ultimately loses his mother to starvation, and joins a gang for a piece of bread.

The boy had approached an affluent family for work but was turned away by the lady of the house. Ironically, the same lady dumps leftovers from her school-going son’s tiffin box. Later, when an underworld don approaches the protagonist and hands him a revolver, assuring him food in return, the boy takes to crime willingly. Sumit says: “We have lost many such childhoods and are compelling many more to leave the mainstream.”

Of 740 films nominated at the film festival, 80 (including 32 foreign films) were selected at the festival.

Sumit who completed his schooling from Bhagalpur, migrated to Delhi for studies in the early 1990s. After completing mass communication degree from Ignou, he joined a national vernacular daily in Delhi, leaving it in 2007 to join film direction and script writing in Mumbai. He is now assisting director Vikrant Nigam in Mumbai for the forthcoming Hindi horror movie 64 Pages.