Cash Cows, an award-winning short film by Shubham Chhabra, tells the story of an international student from India who tries to become a permanent resident but gets caught up in employment scams.
It's a story he now wants to explore as a feature-length documentary during his fourth-month residency at the Surrey campus of Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), in Newton.
Chhabra became the inaugural KDocsFF Filmmaker in Residence after winning the Best Emerging Filmmaker award at the inaugural Sundar Prize Film Festival, held in June at Surrey City Hall.
The director was inspired to make Cash Cows as a 10-minute comedy-drama after hearing the "PR" horror stories of his best friend.
"Our pathway to permanent residency was roughly similar," Chhabra said, "but he encountered the worst people along the way and I met like, surprisingly, just amazing people who were willing to help me, nurture me and get me nice jobs, get me into the film industry, even though without a permanent residency, it's really hard to get into. People supported me, but then I could see his trajectory just end up really bad. He had to jump through a lot of hoops to finally get his residency."
Chhabra said the forthcoming documentary, due in December, will address the topic "more sincerely," with the feedback of KPU students over the coming weeks and months.
“It’s really easy to make victims out of people when trying to tell their stories," he says. "I wanted to keep the film light and send the message to audiences who do not agree or know about such stories. With the documentary, I’m trying to make a balanced viewpoint and not lean heavily just on the idea of people being exploited.”
A bio on imdb.com says Chhabra, who moved here from India, is "committed to bringing South Asian stories to the forefront of mainstream media." One of his projects shed light on elder abuse in the South Asian community, and another examined the lack of wheelchair accessibility in the taxi and ride-hailing industry. As an assistant director, he has worked on TV shows and feature films including Lost in Space, Riverdale, Fire Country and Disney's Peter Pan & Wendy.
Chhabra is an enthusiastic supporter of Sundar Prize film festival, which will move to Guildford's Landmark Cinemas next year.
"It was a great success," he said of the festival launch in June, "and I think they really tapped into a niche, a market, for independent local filmmakers to share their stories that are specifically about social change, about climate change, about telling underrepresented stories by the underrepresented creators. Sundar Prize just gave it a home. It's different from other film festivals in the sense that they have a specific set of topics that they want to address, which is very important, I think, especially with Surrey being a hub for newcomers, so it's the right place to do it, in Surrey. Some of the movies I watched were so good, so creative."
KPU's new Filmmaker in Residence program is powered by KDocsFF, billed as Metro Vancouver's premier social justice film festival.
“It’s such a great push for somebody who just started their career and seeks acknowledgement," said Chhabra, who lives in Burnaby. "I’m looking forward to an opportunity to test my projects in front of new audiences before releasing my future films.”
Greg Chan, an English instructor at KPU and co-director of KDocsFF, said he's excited to bring to campus a talented filmmaker who tells Surrey-based stories.
"Shubham’s storytelling is sure to deepen KPU’s connections to the communities it serves,” said Chan, who launched the residency program.
