Bay Area cinematographer brings the emotional impact of war to light through “Grey Skies”
On a bright and cloudless afternoon, a young girl runs towards a bright blue door screaming, “Open the door! Open the door!” begging to come inside.
Her mother, wearing a grey hijab, chases after her and eventually manages to unlock the door while doing her best to calm her daughter down.
The scene appears in “Grey Skies,” a 15-minute short film about a 7-year-old girl, Sadaf, who has recently immigrated from the Middle East. Because of her past, she is anxious and is particularly afraid of blue skies. Later in the film, she bonds with a homeless U.S. veteran, Ralph, through his violin melodies.
Unnikrishnan Raveendranathan, who goes by Unni Rav, directed “Grey Skies” through the Campbell film company he founded, Visual Narrative Films. Rav and his team of a half-dozen crew members, who come from different parts of the Bay Area, filmed the majority of the scenes in the neighborhood streets of Berryessa in San Jose and at Warm Springs Community Center in Fremont, so he could be near his 16-month-old son.
The budget for “Grey Skies” is around $20,000 and Rav is hoping to show the film at the Toronto International Film Festival and at next year’s South by Southwest Film Festival. He says he was drawn to the story line because it addresses mental health issues.
Esha Bargate, a co-producer and one of the main scriptwriters for the film, said she was inspired to develop the “Grey Skies” concept after reading news articles about a 13-year-old Pakistani boy who really is afraid of blue skies. According to the Atlantic, Zubair told members of Congress in an October 2013 hearing that he doesn’t like clear skies because that is when drones appear in his neighborhood.
Zubair spoke during one of the first briefings at Congress where U.S. politicians listened to victims from the Middle East describe their personal experiences when they were attacked by military drone strikes.
“I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies,” Zubair said in the same article. “The drones do not fly when the skies are gray … When the sky brightens, drones return and we live in fear.”
“When I saw he really enjoys gray skies, cloudy skies, to play outside. That’s a trap. That’s the hook of a story, because most of the Western media, Western people, doesn’t know about all (this) stuff,” Bargate said.
Rav said another major part of the story is how Ralph, the homeless veteran, plays the violin, and in turn, helps the girl calm down and get away from anxiety and depression by listening to music.
In the film, Ralph, who is played by actor Tyler McKenna, wears a dark camo jacket with two military dog tags around his neck. He wakes up suddenly in the early morning to the sound of a girl screaming in the middle of a typical American neighborhood.
He scrambles around his tent in the dark, through soda cans and trash, to turn on his small lamp, and to opes his aged violin case.
A moment later, Ralph sits at the entrance of his tent playing a melody on his violin for the girl until another man in the distant yells, “Shut up!”
“Music is the medium that they connect (through),” Rav said.
Rav said when he saw the first version of the script, he saw the story had potential.
“When there was a veteran involved, and when there was a child involved, and there was an element of war involved, and all that was a pretty big reason for me to say, ‘Yes, I think we have to do this movie,’” Rav said.
He said he has produced multiple films on mental health before.
In 2021, Rav filmed “The Valley,” a story about a Silicon Valley high school student with a learning disability facing stress over her grades and college plans, according to an article from The Mercury News.
He’s also helped produced other films that portray and explore mental health issues, including “Andrea’s Fault,” “Worthy of Survival,” “The Final Doubt” and more.
Rav said he was drawn to the subject, as he has struggled with dyslexia since he was young. He continues to work with a therapist to work through his struggles with dyslexia and self-esteem issues.
He also said his difficulty with reading, but his strength with visuals, shapes and numbers led him to learn more about film and the visual arts.
“I do understand that when somebody goes through a trauma you’re not able to perform as a child … I’m able to understand that aspect of it,” he said.
Manisha Chulani, a therapist serving as consultant on set for “Grey Skies”, said she worked with the two actors portraying the two lead characters on how to properly portray each characters’ mental health issues and symptoms.
She said Ralph has symptoms of PTSD, while Sadaf has anxiety and experiences moments of crying spells in the film.
To help teach Eva Mamurov, the actress portraying Sadaf, to better understand her character’s mental health state, Chulani said she used “play base” techniques and her background as a school psychologist to help. For example, she used puppets and asked Eva if she had friends who’ve shared similar experiences.
Chulani said the story resonated with her because of her own family’s experiences. She said growing up she remembered listening to the stories of her grandparents leaving Pakistan during the India Partition of 1947.
“They had to leave Pakistan, because at that time, it was all one country,” Chulani said. “They had to leave their ancestral home. They had to leave all their belongings, their jewelry and everything, and just leave Pakistan and then move to India … So I think that kind of resonated with me, that part of it.”
McKenna said from the perspective of his character, Ralph discovers how he is able to help someone with similar mental health problems by playing his violin.
“I don’t have a lot of lines to work with, but there’s a lot of feeling behind what’s going on,” McKenna said. “It’s fun to drop into and imagine an imaginative space as a creator, and as an artist, inhabit that reality.”