Children of Muskaan, an NGO working for differently-abled people, guided by film maker Somya Sharma produced a film - To Whom I am Concerned - for which they worked out shots, wrote the script, shot the entire film and even edited it without taking any physical help from people who are termed "normal".

To Whom I am Concerned won the second prize in the 60-minute category in the We Care Film Fest 2008 awards organised by United Nations Information Centre (UNIC). Somya Sharma who guided the differently-abled children in making this documentary is full of praises for them.

"I believe mentally-challenged people are capable of doing everything. I only helped them with the basics of camera handling and editing. They picked up very quickly and shot the entire film on their own. Even the rest of post-production work was done entirely by them," says Somya.

Disability is an issue which is not always satisfactorily handled by Indian film makers, feels Subodh Lal, former director, School of Convergence, and head of the jury that judged the documentary awards.

"Disability should be properly handled. Pity for such people is nothing short of a negative sentiment," Lal says. "Even if you have the best of intentions, programmes and films made on disability are not very appealing."

Veteran danseuse Sonal Mansingh, one of the presenters of the awards, remembers how she overcame her disability and could perform again after an accident in 1974.

"It is amazing how God gifts courage, dedication and self-confidence in such times, and more so to these children. It is amazing to see their work," says Mansingh, referring to the differently-abled children of Muskaan.

"I never address them as disabled, I shall call them 'to be able to do things differently,'" she says. "These films stood out among others because their format was very novel. Most of the films shown in the festival were appropriate and sensitive. Efforts made by disabled people were depicted in a realistic manner," Subodh Lal says supporting Mansingh's statements.

Another young film maker who made her mark in the film festival is Vrishnika, a final-year student of Kamala Nehru College in New Delhi. Vrishnika's film Sparsh won the second prize in the five-minute category.

"Children whom people call 'normal' are not at all different from children who are 'disabled'. Both feel the same amount of peer pressure and both feel scared of failure," says Vrishnika.

People with disability in order to overcome parental pressure often "form a bubble around themselves" to become isolated from the rest of the world, she says.

"This isolating 'bubble' can be removed by a simple 'sparsh' (healing touch), which most people fail to understand," Vrishnika adds.

"Inclusion and integration of people with disabilities with the society is the best help one can give," says Lal. Director of We Care Film Fest, Satish Kapoor, agrees with Lal and says, "Sponsors that had earlier promised to pay for the awards later backed out of the project. Somehow people find it difficult to support even a noble cause like this," Kapoor says.