Overlook 2023 Film Festival – Night of the Bride presses its foot on the gas and doesn’t relent for its full seven minutes. It’s a harrowing and uncomfortable look at forced marriages in India, before morphing into a powerful revenge tale.

Written and directed by Virat Pal, the short kicks off with the bride  (Gurleen Arora) tied to a chair, flanked by her mother and future mother-in-law, played by Harrdeep Kaur and Deepali Jain. As the bride writhes, screams, and cries in the chair, the camera zooms in on her face, highlighting her distress, while the mothers cake her face with make-up and continually say how beautiful she looks and how much her husband will love her.

A good portion of the short focuses on the bride’s protests and her disdain for this arranged marriage. There’s something deeply unsettling about watching a woman tied to a chair and literally brought, bound, with duct tape over her mouth, to her future husband. The final minutes reveal quite a startling surprise about the groom-to-be, before the short evolves into a revenge tale. After witnessing the bride endure a heinous form of torture, her revenge feels totally warranted. You’ll want to stomp and cheer for her.

Night of the Bride is a brave and bold film from a country that has taken a hard-right, nationalist turn under Prime Minister Modi’s leadership. This short is defiant and well-executed, exploding into a justified revenge tale.

7 Out of 10