ESHANA'S TRIAL

The original inspiration came from an animated short called “The Hangman” that I saw in high school.  It is an 11 minute animation that Les Goldman and Paul Julian created in 1964. It is based on a poem that Maurice Ogden wrote in 1951.

The plot concerns an enigmatic hangman who enters a small town and murders its citizens one by one until only the narrator is left. When the hangman comes for him, he protests that he did nothing wrong. The hangman replies that he did nothing to help the others and now there is no one left to defend him.

Ogden wrote his poem as a  commentary on the evil committed against American citizens during the McCarthy era in the 1940s. We are clearly facing similar authoritarian impulses in North America today.

I wanted to provide audiences with a more hopeful story, so I tried to imagine what kind of hero would be able to stand up to the Hangman. It had to be someone who had every reason to fear him but able to act in spite of that fear. She would also have to be willing to act without knowing what the outcome would be.

Eshana’s character was inspired by the real life stories of several remarkable women whose acts of kindness and resilience inspired me. One of them happens to be of East Indian ancestry.

They are an interfaith couple in fact. While this is a nuance that I intend to explore more fully in the feature length version of the film, Eshana was raised in the Christian faith.

I was heartbroken when I learned about the hate-motivated murder of the Afzal family right here on Canadian soil in 2021. It is not who we are as Ontarians. Rather focusing on their killer's malicious behavior however, I wanted Eshana’s Trial to reflect the suffering of the victims and the incredible amount of resilience that their emotional healing requires.

I tried; but as a first-time indie producer on a limited budget, it proved to be surprisingly difficult to find an actress whose features and disability align with the original character description. I am planning to devote more time and resources into our talent search for the feature length adaptation.