'On our first day at the Kumbh Mela, there was a fire and shook our confidence.'
'There must have been a few crore people there.'
'How do we place the camera in between them?'
This kind of a story rarely happens in the film world, especially among indie filmmakers. Vimukt (In Search of the Sky), a small film set in the rural parts of Madhya Pradesh and the Maha Kumbh Mela, will soon play at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Vimukt is Jitank Singh Gurjar's debut feature and is produced and written by Pooja Vishal Sharma, who is partly based in France. The film was shot in just 11 days.
Vimukt narrates the story of a poor couple in a village, who have a mentally challenged adult son. After years of struggle, they decide to take their son to the Maha Kumbh Mela, hoping for a miracle.
The film stars two theatre actors, Nikhil Yadav (playing the mentally challenged son Naran), Raghvendra Bhadoriya (the father) and Meghna Agarwal, who plays Naran's mother and has acted in a few films.
The rest of the cast are non-actors.
Before they left for Toronto, Aseem Chhabra spoke to the Vimukt team via Zoom -- Producer Sharma, Director Gurjar, Actor Yadav and Cinematographer Shelly Sharma. It was their first time giving an interview.
Congratulations to the whole team. How did this project come about? I think Pooja, your drive started the project right?
Pooja: Last year, when I came back to India from France, I thought I needed to do something.
There was so much talk that the Maha Kumbh Mela was about to take place.
I wanted to visit, but my family and friends discouraged me, saying it would not be safe. But I felt the calling was coming from within me.
Then this story came to my mind about a boy who is mentally challenged, and his parents leave him at the mela. I wanted to explore the story.
Shelly: Correct me, if I am wrong, Pooja, but wasn't it after you visited a village in India that you came across the story?
Pooja: Yes, and I read it also in the newspaper. These stories are very common in India.
So some parents go to the mela, and leave their children who have mental health issues, when they can't afford to take care of them?
Pooja: Yes. I started writing the story, and that's how the whole process started. Then immediately, we created a very small team.
Did you know Jitank and Shelley before?
Pooja: No. My younger sister saw Jitank's short film Baasan and was impressed.
I liked his storytelling.
I could see my film in the same genre. That's how we met him.
The Maha Kumbh Mela happened in January and February. You wrote the script, shot the film, did all the post-production work and now the film is ready to go to Toronto. How did you guys do it so fast?
(The group starts to laugh.)
Pooja: We keep asking ourselves the same question. I always believe that teamwork is the most important element.
We created a beautiful team. Shelly came into the picture, and when she took over, she guided us.
The first hour of the film is set in the village. Did you shoot that first?
Pooja: We started with the Kumbh Mela because I was not sure how it will go.
The idea was let us finish the shoot at the mela.
If we succeed, we proceed. If we don't, we will come back.
How many days was the total shoot?
Pooja: The mela was six days and the village was for five days. So a total of 11 days to shoot the film.
Wow!
Jitank: We did the editing in 15 days. That was the first cut.
On our first day at the Kumbh Mela, there was a fire and shook our confidence.
There must have been a few crore people there.
How do we place the camera in between them?
We kept facing challenges -- doing the recce, shooting and then immediately after that, going to the village to shoot the first part of the film.
We didn't have a full team.
Each person was doing three or four jobs. Nikhil is our lead actor, but sometimes, he also drove the car.
Pooja: Serving tea, food, water. Everybody was doing everything.
But you placed the mother, father and Nikhil's character in the middle of such a crowded gathering. How was it all managed?
Shelly: We couldn't figure out how to manage the shoot because there were so many people, who were going to be extras but didn't know that.
There is a scene where the father is taking the son to get him a dumroo.
We had not brought a lot of the equipment, but we had to shoot that scene from a higher level.
Jitank noticed a dust bin. We overturned the dust bin and I stood on top of it with the camera.
Another time, when the father leaves the son on a bridge, Pooja and Jitank had visualised the bridge to be packed with people.
We had two members in the crowd and they pretended to fight.
When a few people looked towards the camera, one of the unit members yelled out 'Tumhe Bhagwan ki kasam camera ki taraf mat dekho.'
We were in such a religious environment and those words worked wonders.
Nobody looked at the camera.
How did Nikhil stay in the character during such scenes?
Jitank: Nikhil would always stay in the character.
We would call for a cut, but there was so much noise that Nikhil would continue being the character, Naran.
Most people actually thought he was mentally challenged and some even gave him money.
Nikhil: Some people left me Rs 50 and Rs 10.
Shelly: There is a clip where a sadhu thought Nikhil really had mental issues and handed him some money. We have kept that clip in the final edit.
Nikhil: And I have saved that money.
Jitank: We had to shoot it like a documentary and then stitch the narrative together.
Nikhil, I still want to know how you stayed in the character, when there were so many random people around you. How did you avoid tripping, banging into people?
Nikhil: I have done a lot of theatre, especially nukkud natak(street theatre). That training helped me a lot.
During the shoot at the Kumbh Mela, I did have this fear... what if people do something to me? But I had to push myself and stay in character.
Jitank and Pooja, how long did it take you to write the script? Usually, people take years working on scripts.
Jitank: It took us about two weeks.
Pooja: This film was very clear in my mind. Jaise picture chal rahi thi dimag main. I was clear about the beginning, middle and the end.
Jitank: When I first talked to Pooja on the phone, there was so much conviction in her that I left whatever I was doing to join the project.
We added the Braj Bhasha treatment. It's the language spoken in the Gwalior area where I come from.
My short film was also in Braj Bhasha. We added many small nuances from the area and that is how the script came about.
Of course, we improvised quite a bit while on the set.
Tell us how you found the actors.
Jitank: Nikhil was Pooja's find.
Pooja: Last year, my sister and I were producing a play and Nikhil was in it. I told him I would like to work with him on a film although I didn't know when that would happen. But within a month, I started working with him on Vimukt.
Jitank: There's a theatre group in Gwalior called Kala Samooh.
Raghvendra Bhadoriya, who plays Nikhil's father, is part of that group and he had also played the lead in my short film Baasan.
He is actually a farmer.
After the film's shoot, he went back to farming.
Pooja: We want to take him to Toronto, but he doesn't have a passport and not even an Adhaar card. He has raw talent as an actor, but otherwise, he's a farmer.
Jitank: Meghna Agarwal, who plays the mother, works in the film industry. We selected her after she auditioned.
Did you have a sense that TIFF will accept the film?
Pooja: We were confident that we had a good film that depicts rural India, the Maha Kumbh tradition, and a good cast.
But it is still great to get selected at TIFF. Anurag Kashyap also has a film (Bandar) at this year's festival, but he is a well-known filmmaker and his works have played at TIFF earlier as well. Did you know any of the programmers at TIFF?
We didn't know any programmers as such. But we knew we had to get someone to watch the film.
We were fortunate that Meenakshi Shedde (South Asia programmer at TIFF) watched the film and liked it.
