Cast :  Maanuv Bharadwaj, Priyanka Panchal, Mann Bagga, Simran Deep, Nirmal Kumar Pant.

Direction: Mahesh Bhatt.

Produced: Mahesh Bhatt, Kamal Birani.

Written: Dr Piyoosh Rautela, Rituraj Bhatt.

Genre: Adventures, Drama.

Duration: 117 Mins

Some cinematic endeavours do not require a rating. They deserve special mention just for attempting and bringing to fruition stories and themes where few would venture to go.

The Silent Heroes is the story of 13 deaf children (who are also hearing impaired in real life). Their sheer resourcefulness and determination to handle a crisis forms the crux of the film.

Kapil (Maanuv Bharadwaj) is the narrator and an instructor volunteering with the National Social Service, preparing people for disasters when they strike. He visits a school for the hearing impaired children and agrees to coach the children in disaster management at the behest of their sign-language teacher, Gauri (Priyanka Panchal). She does not know him but he recognises her. She was the devastated fiancée of Kshitij (Raj Gairola), a deaf-mute teacher who loved his students and was determined to have them scale peaks as an assertion of their independence. Kshitij died an untimely death in an avalanche, leaving Gauri and his friend Dipankar (Mann Bagga) to further his mission. Kapil was heading the expedition that had tried to look for Kshitij’s body, but unsuccessfully. The guilt weighs heavy on him but Gauri’s zeal for the children gets him on board.

The 13 children are a spirited bunch – obedient and enthusiastic. Their secondary instructor Hima (Simrandeep) has little respect for what she perceives as their limitations and ensures that the children are trained in an unduly harsh manner. When Kapil is injured in a mishap and unable to lead the children in the expedition, Hima takes over, leading to a difficult trek ahead for the tweens and teens. Calamity strikes soon enough and Kapil is determined to redeem the mistakes of his past in a race against time to find the children.

The Silent Heroes is a showcase of the children’s talent without melodrama to highlight their plight. They accept themselves and are determined to prove something to the world. Theirs is actually a lighter track. It is the adult characters who have their own baggage from the past that they have to contend with. The children are the true heroes as they struggle to survive in a hostile terrain. All 13 of them must take a bow for giving compelling performances without any dialogue – Tarun Bhargav, Jaideep Rawat, Prakhar Chamoli, Nikhil Bhargav, Aashish Chauhan, Gurfareen Bano, Samreen Bano, Mohd. Ujaifa, Khwaish Gupta, Sweta Prakash, Shalini Rawat, Radhika Chauhan and Renu Singh Khatri,

Gorgeous locations and a heartfelt attempt to illustrate their abilities makes this film a must-watch, especially for schoolchildren, to empathise and appreciate the onscreen team spirit. It highlights the limitations but also the triumph of their fortitude against daunting odds, making The Silent Heroes a commendable effort.