Feroze, the canteen owner at a film theatre part of the International Children’s Film Festival, encourages Gopal, his helper, to watch a film sometime. And even if a wall is all that separates him from the screen, Gopal is overworked and has no time, so he shrugs away the suggestion. Feroze, on the other hand, walks in and out of screenings sporadically. Until one day he walks inside and is pleasantly confronted by Majid Majidi‘s Children of Heaven. A time cut later, we see him sitting on a chair, still as a rock—a familiar feeling wherein a moving piece of art renders you motionless. When Gopal walks in, Feroze starts to narrate the movie’s plot. Everything that happens from here on—the involvement with which Feroze tells the story, Gopal’s soft sobs as a result—is the most poignant counterargument to the aforementioned theory of entertainment.
When asked if this was deliberate messaging, Sasi agrees that producers love to underestimate the average viewer. “Janaalaki ekkadhandi (It won’t strike a chord with people) is a common sentiment”. He also thinks that audiences are conditioned to equate slice-of-life cinema with boredom, but the filmmaker’s reason behind writing this scene is different. When Sasi first watched Abbas Kiarostami‘s Khane-ye doust kodjast? (Where Is The Friend’s Home?), he was just as stunned as Feroze. “I was amazed how such a small idea can be turned into a film”. This creative act of gently stretching a simple moment into a feature film is emblematic of Iran’s humanist cinema and a great influence on this duo’s filmmaking. Sasi wanted to pay tribute to it by doing the same with Feroze’s character. Majidi’s Children of Heaven wasn’t playing at the festival, but Sasi wanted it to be the film Feroze finds his reflection in. Movies are dreamcatchers, after all.
While a voiceover in the film says that Rahul Ramakrishna’s RK is greedy for great cinema, I ask Sasi, half expecting a cool no, ‘Does fame and money mean anything to you?’, he has no problem admitting that they aspire to be and are proper commercial filmmakers. “Maakoo manchi car la lo tiragaali, bank balance lu undaali, inkaa chaalaa kaavaali ani untundi” (We too want fancy cars, decent bank balance, and much more). The absence of pretence is rather refreshing. He then tells me that they sustain thanks to their fans. “During the first lockdown, Hriday Ranjan of Film Companion South recommended our Story Discussion web series along with a couple of other Telugu titles. Through that, we found a fan from Rajahmundry, who is a doctor. He gave us money to do a short film.”