Director Shoojit Sircar’s new short film Comparison Adds Pressure — part of Mirinda’s Release The Pressure campaign — is an apt addition to the viral short film that released last year, based on the pressures that children face at school.

The film delves into the issue of parental pressure imposed on children. The 1-minute-42-second-long short starts with a group of young kids at a peer support group meet. They are seen narrating their harrowing experiences at home, with a counsellor.

Each of the kids take turns to revisit what their parents keep telling them: from constant comparisons to friends, family and demotivating words, we learn that these 13-15 year old children are subjected to a lot of stress and humiliation, every day.

What is remarkable about this film is how Sircar has managed to evoke the distress in the voices of these children.

This is also the best time of the year to release this film as millions of students in India are all set to take their board examinations. The hullabaloo around examinations in India is so high that the class 10th and 12th board examinations have somehow transcended from mere rites of passage to a personal judgment of success. How students fare in these tests decide (to a great extent) their fate for the future — sad, but true.

In 2015, the number of student suicides estimated to 8,934, and from 2010 to 2015, 39,775 students committed suicide, as per a report by The Hindustan Times, published on 8 May, 2017. Shoojit Sarcar’s short could not have come at a better time.

Watch the short film here:

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