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When a film looks deceptively simple and sweet, it is usually a testament to how complex its making actually was.
Ahead of its release on October 23, director Kaushal Oza’s 90s Goa-set family feature Little Thomas—starring Gulshan Devaiah and Rasika Dugal—is drawing attention for its warm, nostalgic tone. But beneath its sun-kissed exterior lies a production marathon that proves making a family film is anything but child’s play.
Take, for instance, the casting of the film's titular anchor. Determined to steer clear of hyper-rehearsed child agency talent, Oza and his FTII batchmate and casting director Nitin Goel embarked on an eight-month marathon, scouting classrooms across South Mumbai institutions and the Ryan International school chain to audition 800 kids.
They bypassed traditional coordinators entirely, spending 30 minutes with over 800 children just chatting about life, family, and "fictional nonsense" to gauge their raw imagination and vulnerability.
"I didn't want to rush into auditioning kids," Oza tells THR India. "We were seeking children who didn't have experience... We wanted someone who's innocent and vulnerable for Thomas. So we didn't want it to feel like a zero-sum game, like a success and failure thing."
The search hit a wall just four months before principal photography, leaving the production without its main character. A sleep-deprived Oza fired off a 3:30 am panic email to Goel: "It seemed like on the day of shoot, everything would be in place except an actor to play Thomas."
The turning point came when they reversed their steps and re-examined early rejections. Among them was Hridansh Parekh—who had originally been dismissed at age five-and-a-half after uttering nothing but the word "no" during his initial meeting. By the time he turned six-and-a-half, a video audition featuring a flawless, two-and-a-half-page monologue changed everything.
"We had this dilemma till the very end," Oza recalls. "Should we go for a safe option or take a little risk? Taking that risk means picking up someone truly vulnerable. Once we cast him, he grew from strength to strength!"
That same spirit of resourcefulness extended far beyond the casting room and straight into the art department.
Operating within the tight, disciplined budgets characteristic of independent cinema, production designers Vikram Singh and Parul Rai had to work magic.
When a key bakery location got stuck because a Salman Khan film was occupying the site, and facing the reality that half-day shoots for isolated scenes like a hospital sequence were financially unviable, the team engineered a logistical workaround.
Utilising a studio space in Mumbai, the production designed a single core set that was smartly repurposed three times over. They shot the Goan family bakery set first, physically turned the walls around and redressed the props to transform it into a school interior, and finally carved out a small corner of the set to shoot a hospital sequence—saving massive overheads while maintaining period authenticity, Oza recalls.
"This hack of being resourceful is what we had learnt at FTII and that's exactly what helped during the making. Every department pitched in beyond their designated roles to make this happen," he says.
Little Thomas is produced by Luminoso Pictures, Civic Studios, Good Bad Films, and Ranjan Singh's Flip Films and Anurag Kashyap.