Sooni Taraporevala’s directorial debut ‘Little Zizou’ takes a sneak peek into Parsi
culture, says Shilpa Sachdev


The 11-year old Parsi boy Xerxes Khodaiji (Jahan Bativala) is a soccer fan and dreams of meeting his icon Zinedine Zidane. Motherless Xerxes, who also gets himself a pet name ‘Little Zizou’ from the soccer legend, believes his angel mother will fulfill this wish. Meanwhile his recluse zany brother Artaxerxes Khodaiji (Imaad Shah) writes a Bawa blog, does cartoon sketching and hates his father. He, along with his two friends, is experimenting on converting a crashed cockpit into a flight simulator.

Artaxerxes is in love with Zenobia Presswala (Dilshad Patel), daughter of neighbour Boman Presswala (Boman Irani) who runs a century old newspaper press – Rustom-e-Sohrab. But Zenobia who loves someone else (John Abraham in a cameo) uses Artaxerxes to guard her love-story from her parents. Meanwhile Zenobia's little sister Liana (Iyanah Bativala) hates the fact that her parents shower the motherless Xerxes with more than necessary attention and love.

There is Xerxes’ extremist father Cyrus II Khodaiji (Sohrab Ardeshir) claiming to be a religious healer who misleads the Parsi community by propagating that Parsis should not pollute their blood by mingling with other communities. To which the liberalist Boman Presswala objects by the medium of his community newspaper. The communal conflict between the two forms the crux of the movie, giving rise to many other relationships of love and hatred alongside.

Through this film and her understanding of the Parsi community, Sooni Taraporevala has tried to throw light on the long existing internal dispute amongst the Parsi community between the fundamentalists and liberalists. However, the mood of the film is light-hearted interspersed with warm moments and the quirky sense of humour normally associated with the Bawa community. The all-Parsi star cast makes the film more genuine and realistic with each character etched well by Sooni. Her own kids Jahan and Iyanah have an easy screen presence. Boman as the progressive Parsi is a delight with his impeccable comic timing. Imaad Shah, the only non-Parsi in the film, exudes the charm of a young Naseer and ditto with his act on screen. Other characters from Mahabanoo Mody Kotwal to Sohrab Ardeshir, Shernaz Patel, Cyrus Broacha, Kamal Sidhu, Kunal Vijaykar and others fit in to give the film its authentic Parsi flavour.

It would have helped if some more background account was given on the Parsi origin except for the fact that they migrated to India when Arabs attacked Persia.

The film does get a little boring at times, but it does a great job of capturing the lazy charm of Mumbai’s Parsi community. And if you are one with a broad taste, you will fall in love with the film and savour the innocence of this Bawa tale.

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