‘Little Thomas’: How Kaushal Oza found the right tone while telling a wondrous story of a kid

Amid the spectacle of action and romance, innocence has withered away from Hindi cinema screens in recent years. Consumed by an overarching tendency to tell larger-than-life stories, the smaller ways haven’t quite found expression. That changes this coming Friday (October 23, 2026) with Little Thomas, where the perspective shifts to a wondrous seven-year-old boy who desperately wants a younger brother joining him in his adventures. Starring Gulshan Devaiah, Rasika Dugal and Hridansh Gokani in the lead, the film was born out of a similar yearning writer-director Kaushal Oza had when he was six.

“I always wanted a little brother growing up. That desire has stayed with me through the years, and even as an adult I felt that vacuum within me,” Kaushal tells The Hindu. As the feeling of “lacking something” persisted, Kaushal wrote the one-pager idea while studying at the Film and Television Institute of India. When he revisited it years later, Kaushal resonated with the story.

“When we write stories, we write them as the kind of people we are at that moment. However, you don’t feel the same way about them later. But this really stuck with me after all these years,” Kaushal says, citing the work of Ruskin Bond, RK Narayan’s Malgudi Days and James Herriot’s All Things Bright and Beautiful as inspirations. “I wanted to capture the innocence that these books contain. I knew that it was the kind of film that I would definitely want to watch.”

Kaushal wanted to create a similar tone in Little Thomas by taking these books as references. He feels it is tough to write films with a child protagonist where it is important to “maintain the right balance of complexity and simplicity”. It took him a long time to crack the right tone as he went to Pondicherry to write the initial draft of the screenplay. “I went there in August, and I thought that by October, I would have something to work on. But it was my last day in October. I had written one scene, which felt authentic. After getting that tone, it was fairly easier to write other scenes,” he says.

Kaushal doesn’t like to think of Little Thomas as a children’s film. Even while writing, he didn’t look at Thomas as a child. “The character deserves respect and complexity about how much emotion they can carry. And kids learn quickly and are emotionally complex. So, I didn’t write to simplify things. Just the way the character is expressing those emotions will change because a seven-year-old won’t have the vocabulary to talk about them. Only those allowances need to be made for age. But otherwise, at no point was I looking down upon the character,” Kaushal says.

He followed the same working style on set while communicating with the child actors. Kaushal describes the casting process to be intense. Interestingly, he made an illustrated poster of the film when he was pitching it, and the image of Thomas in it came quite close to actor Hridansh Parekh, who plays the role. They auditioned over 800 kids, and the entire process was streamlined to bring out their best qualities instead of just asking them to read lines from a script. Three levels of workshops were done. “We met each of them and tried to understand their being and how comfortable they are with the environment to help them approach the audition for this particular character. It was also important for them to look the age,” Kaushal says.

Due to the extensive audition, there was a familiarity with the child actors that helped in shooting the scenes. There would be discussions about the story and how each of the characters would react. Kaushal feels that it is important to talk to children as equals. “It is also good to let them make their own choices so that they feel responsible about them and face the consequence even if it requires five takes. It is essential to let them discover something for themselves,” Kaushal says.

To him, Little Thomas also seemed like the “perfect film” to make at the time as it didn’t require much money. “Later on I realised those kinds of big-budget films are in fact easier to pitch than pitching a film about a seven-year-old protagonist,” he smiles, describing how the film was warmly received when he narrated the story to producers, who weren’t sure about coming on board. “When a new idea is pitched, there is nothing to refer to in the recent past about a similar film that worked at the box office. And if you have something that is too familiar and there are five films like that already, then why do you even need a sixth one? This duality is something we as writers always get caught up in,” Kaushal opines.

He says that there are many other writers, who want to make films with child protagonists and explore newer genres. “But there is an issue of gatekeeping as well as films are greenlit with some intent. This is where a lot of newer ideas and genres get dropped out,” he says. “A Lot of these decisions are also made with data. But data will only tell you what has worked. It will never tell you to make a film with an outlandish premise about a bunch of villagers trying to take on the English in a cricket game. Data will tell you not to make this film.”

There is that off-beat factor embedded in the short films that Kaushal has made before, which includes the period-dramas, The Miniaturist of Junagadh (2022) and Vaishnav Jan Toh (2010). The writer-director says he has various interests, and filmmaking offers him the privilege of exploring a particular topic in depth. “You get to live with a story for a long time, sometimes even if you don’t want to, but the story will haunt you. I find it quite fulfilling when I am consumed by a particular topic while researching for a film. I get to live so many different lives. That’s why I really hope to keep telling different stories,” he says.

Little Thomas will be released in theatres on October 23