BEBINCA

A FILM ABOUT GRIEF, RESILIENCE, AND THE TASTE OF MEMORY

A FILM BY MELWYN WILLIAMS

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BEBINCA
A Film About Grief, Resilience, and the Taste of Memory

Title: Bebinca
Genre: Poetic Drama / Family Tragedy / Social Realism
Tone: Quiet, lyrical, restrained. Alternating between tenderness and despair, with bursts of emotional intensity. Evokes realism and symbolic layering, rooted in Indian middle-class life.
Language: Hindi and Konkani
Setting: Goa
Format: Feature Film | Drama | Colour | DCP
Target Runtime: ~110 – 120 minutes
Target Rating: UA (India), PG-13 (International)
Produced By: Bahumukhi Kalakaar Sangam (Artist Collective), MWC Cinema Company.
Principal Crew:
Director: Melwyn Williams
DOP: Antonio Michael
Creative Director (s): Dr Biju K Damodaran, Ravi Kemmu
Editor: Aseem Sinha
Production Design: Ajayan V Kattungal
Make Up: Pattanam Designitory
Costume Design: Aravind Kumar

LOGLINE

After the tragic death of their father, a resilient young woman struggles to care for her autistic brother while running a Goan food stall; but when society turns against him as he grows older, she faces an impossible choice between love, dignity, and survival, unaware that a single moment of anger will lead to irreversible loss.

SYNOPSIS

Bebinca is a deeply emotional, socially resonant drama set in Goa, woven around a Goan family’s journey through love, loss, and survival.

Following the early death of their mother, a devoted father raises his daughter and mentally challenged son with tenderness and resilience. When diagnosed with cancer, the father initially tries to hides the truth to protect his children but in vain. The daughter takes the charge of the situation and drives the family forward. She balances between her studies, love life, looking after the sick father and mentally challenged younger brother. Upon recovering, the father uncovers a banking scam but is scapegoated and publicly humiliated. Unable to bear the betrayal, he dies by suicide, leaving his daughter and her brother to navigate life alone.

The daughter finds strength in her father’s diary and opens a modest Goan eatery, where her brother, with his innocent charm and catchphrase “Bahut achha hai!”, becomes the soul of the place. But as he matures physically, society’s perception of him shifts, and warmth turns to fear. The sister, now married to a politically ambitious man, struggles to shield her brother from rejection, even as her husband withdraws support and the market turns hostile.

In a devastating moment of exhaustion, she lashes out at the brother she once swore to protect. The boy, heartbroken and unable to comprehend her words, walks to the same bridge where their father died, and quietly follows.

Told with haunting tenderness, Bebinca explores how love is tested by survival, how society fails its most innocent, and how grief carries both sweetness and silence.

Prologue: Layers

Before anything else, there was sweetness.
Not loud, not showy, but the kind that sits quietly on the tongue, heavy with memory.
Filomena baked Bebinca every Christmas, seven layers if time allowed, thirteen if the year had been kind.

Each layer poured slow, set slower, then kissed with ghee and heat.
“Patience is part of the flavour,” she would say, smiling through the steam.

Maria watched as a girl. She stirred as a daughter.

Later, she would bake as a woman holding grief in her palms and folding it into batter.

Her brother, Brian, only knew that the last layer was always the sweetest.
He didn’t understand why. But he waited for it, faithfully.

Her father, Savio, never asked for Bebinca.
He only ate it when no one was looking.

Years passed. Some layers cracked.
The house stayed. The city changed. The photo on the wall grew dust.

Then one day, there was no recipe left. Only memory.

And a silence so thick it had to be cut with a knife and served gently.
This is not a story of celebration.

It is a story of what remains after sweetness.

A girl. A boy. A diary. A crayon.
And a slice of Bebinca… placed quietly on the railing of a bridge.