TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Hi. I'm Rohar Parashuram Kanawade, writer and director of feature film Sabar Bonda, Cactus Pears. It's my debut feature, and you're listening to Trust Me. I Know What I'm Doing. Yeah.

My name is Abhay Dandekar, and I share conversations with talented and interesting individuals linked to the global Indian and South Asian community. It's informal and informative, adding insights to our evolving cultural expressions, where each person can proudly say, Trust Me I Know What I'm Doing. Hi, everyone. On this episode of Trust Me I Know What I'm Doing, we share a conversation with filmmaker Rohan Parusharam Kanawade. Stay tuned.

As always, thank you for listening and watching and making Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing part of your day. I know it takes time and effort, so I really appreciate you engaging with me here and for sharing this with all your friends and family. And again, if you're enjoying these, it would mean a great deal if you can take a moment and share a kind rating or a written review. So many times baked into the several hundred conversations that we've shared is a theme that I'm always interested in hearing more about, which is finding surprising stories to tell, which is finding surprising stories to tell that came from unexpected occurrences. For filmmaker Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, this has been a recurrent theme in his ongoing journey that speaks to a very organic expression of his own unique storytelling.

Rohan grew up in a Mumbai slum. His dad was a chauffeur, and his mom was a homemaker, and they were both incredibly supportive of his self driven quest to pursue art and film. After success with short films like U, Ushacha and Khidki, he developed and iterated several versions of his debut feature as an independent filmmaker called Sabar bonda or Cactus Pears, which not only premiered recently as the first ever Marathi feature film at the Sundance Film Festival, but took home the grand jury prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. The film is a semi autobiographical story that centers around a man who while visiting his ancestral village to grieve the loss of his father, finds solace, tender comfort, escape, and intimacy through a childhood friend. The kind of film that resonates loudly through its quiet, very relatable human expression.

As we always find high value in local authenticity, Rohan wanted to importantly highlight very personal themes of sexuality, cultural ties, and family relationships as manifested by rural and working poor characters, all of which have deep anchors in his own woven journey. We were able to catch up about his filmmaking and learn lessons along the way, and I, of course, wanted to know more about the atmosphere and vibe that he was encountering at Sundance…

Oh, atmosphere, it's it's great. There's, like, you know, there's so many people, so many filmmakers here and, you know, we've been meeting other filmmakers. We met the Sundance team finally.

Like, we've been in just in touch with them on emails or, you know, with Kim. We were on Zoom calls. Yeah. But, for the first time I met her, I met the director Eugene and other programmers, spoke to them, and they shared their thoughts about the film. And, yeah, it was great me being here because, you know, I've I've I've always, wanted to come to those big festivals.

Yeah. And Sundance was one of them and finally and I've been, you know, I have previously, I have submitted my feature scripts for the, say, their screenwriting labs, but now, you know, finally, here with the finished film is something, you know, interesting. So No. And, I mean, there's a definitely an energy that, an excitement and, you know It's like, you know, the year year that mainstream, the way it has lit up and everything, it feels more like a festival. I mean, of course, it's a film festival where, you know, it's more than that.

It looks something else, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Something more than just the sort of physicality of it. Like I said, there's a a a vibe, to the entire space that that helps.

Yeah. You know, I I've been reading and and learning a little bit more about, Sabre bunde, and, you know, it's your first feature. And it's been kind of described as warm and intimate and very tender, as a story. And these themes are are definitely words and themes that that take patience particularly to, you know, really develop. And I'm I'm wondering what you perhaps learned particularly as a filmmaker about patience in making this film and really presenting those those very important themes.

Patience is, I think, something that as a filmmaker or a creator, you really need, though, that that one talent. Like, I would rather say or either the skill, whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You really need it because sometimes when you are making an independent films, it takes a it takes a very long time. Yeah. Depending on what you're making and the kind of support you get during that journey. So it takes a lot of time for us also. I mean, we started working on it on in 2020.

So it took us as many years to finish the film. So yeah. Yeah. Patience is something you really need. I mean, also, when you're shooting it, you know, that's so then do you really need it, Parisian?

Because, you know, you are doing so many you have to make so many decisions. Yeah. You know, and, you all crave patience, and it is very important. And and in particularly thinking about the themes and the story that you're presenting, did that also, you know, help in a way to allow for things the story to develop and and allow for that particular, again, vibe or or the temperature of this film to stay in a very kind of, like, slow and developing fashion unlike maybe, you know, some other types of films that are out there that that they feel like they're very, very pressured and rushed. Yeah.

No. Exactly. The whole idea also was to preserve that passing of time, which is slow. Because, you know, when you grieve I mean, there are many people who must have, you know, gone through this experience of grieving their loved ones. And though that time, that initial period, I think that always feels very slow because of all the void that you feel and you Mhmm.

So it feels slow, and I think we'd make we wanted to preserve that. And Yeah. And on top of that, we I when I was mourning my father, I was in my in his ancestral village. And, you know, when you're in the village, anyway, time goes slow. So that was the added thing into it.

And then because I was not doing anything, even I was there at my I said, well, it's morning my father. Me and my mother would just sit in the house the whole day. Yeah. Our relatives will go they would just go out and do their works. They go to the farm.

So it's just me it used to be just me and my mother and then, you know, just quiet through throughout the day. So so, yeah, that slowness I I I wanted because of that whole, setting and experience. And it's also it was a we it is also, kind of a portrait of that time. Right? So Yeah.

Yeah. And and, you know, it's interesting because especially after the loss of a parent, the mourning process, you know, you have to deal with very adult like items, and yet you're brought back to a place where you've been a child. And, you know, for you, was there some dichotomy here in particularly choosing mourning and grief and emptiness and loss as kind of backdrop anchors for a film that otherwise is, you know, relatively romantic and has some narratives about a developing relationship? So the basically, you know, when I was grieving my father, I was trying to find escape, because all the relatives who came to meet us, they were only talking about my marriage. And because I was 30 then, and, I had lost my father.

And so all of a sudden, I had become the head of the company. Yeah. Yeah. And then everyone started saying, you know, no. Now you have to get married.

Your father needs someone, and all that stuff started happening in school. I was just all the time trying to find the escape, and that's why I had this thought, what if I had a friend over here who knew about me? I would have just sneaked out. Yeah. So when when I started thinking about that, I felt there is a story here.

Yeah. And, you know, that's how actually the, that inspiration came because I was trying to find escape all the time. So And that's not necessarily an obvious, set you know, backdrop. Exactly. Because I never thought about I want to make film on this because I had that thought when I was the heir in the house.

Yeah. And I the throughout those 10 days, I was just thinking, how can I just go out? How, where? And then later on, I just felt like, you know, yeah. I can maybe write something on this.

This is something interesting over here and, you know Yeah. Maybe if I start exploring this, I can I can actually change my experience and make it the tender and warm for the central character and me? Basically, reimagining that whole time. So that's how it came to me. It was not that I wanted to write this story using this background.

Everything was just there. The thoughts that came that just turned into this idea. Let me ask you. I mean, some of your previous, films, if I had to think of, like, words to describe them. Right?

Your your short film, Khidkii maybe is, you know, about the obvious voyeurism that's there, and the film, that you made, U Ushacha, is a little bit about discovery. And in this particular case, what what would be the word maybe that describes Saba da Boornda? Oh, it's it's it's, it's, I think it's finding someone in a time or place where do you don't expect that. Basically, it's like, you know, it's it's I think it's more a romance drama because I didn't want to make a film about grieving period or dealing with grief. I mean, there is grief.

The character is dealing with it, but I think, romance becomes, takes over, and that's when that journey for this character becomes tender, and it also helps the love and affection that he receives. That helps him helps him to, deal with his grief, I think. So I think it's score it's a romance trauma. I would rather see that. Yeah.

Do you think that, sometimes it's helpful to understand the surprises that come from trauma? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and and I guess with that, you know, because a lot of times these, you know, these are moments.

There's an open window someplace. You're you're peering into it. There's a a friendship that develops in in an area of absence. And now, in this particular example, right, there's a a period of time where you're really going through a lot of loss, and emptiness, and yet the surprise, of a connection, maybe a a kind of dormant connection is there. It that seems to be sort of like a a formula, maybe for for some of the stories that you're presenting.

Is that something that that you found easy in in a way or or, like, natural to portray as a filmmaker? Yeah. But, you know, that that's what you know, it was, like, I never really thought to think what I want to do. This was literally organic. Yeah.

And, you know, and, one of the other things that I would add here that, you know, since my childhood when you saw whenever I used to go to my SSO village, I used to always say you know, I have this question in my mind that, are there any gay guys here? Yeah. You know? So that was another the childhood thought also, you know, helped me, you know, add that in this film because even though I when I was thinking that I what if I had a friend over here? But when that when I was thinking about that, then I thought, oh, okay.

You know, that that I thought I had in my childhood. Maybe, you know, these 2, I can combine and, you know, something can come out come out of it. So it was a surprise, but I think it was organic. It was just as I was just thinking more about it just yeah. It all those thoughts were actually surprising me.

Yeah. But I was not surprised in a way that, you know, this is a very surprising setting because Sure. For many people it was, like, some some friends from my ancestral village when they got to know that I I've I've written a script. It's a romance when that happens during this grieving period. They will accept it.

I mean, how can this happen? Yeah. Even, you know, one of my friend, who was with me in the script writing lab, so he knew about the script and, but even they recently when he saw the film, and he was like, you know, when I had read about the story for the first time, synopsis and everything, he was like, you know, I was wondering how is he going to do this film, this robot cinema. So they were all surprised. For me, it was not because first, grieving was, it came from my own experience.

Then rest of the things that I use, even though they are fiction, but they are also, like, you know, things that I experienced in my child. Like, you know, when these two friends start spending time, they they they they go goat they go for goat grazing. So I used to as a child, I used to go with my cousins when they used to go, for goat grazing. I used to go. It was exciting.

Right? So Yeah. So some of the memories from that time, just so you know Right. It would be very hot. So most of time, you know, they would just let goats graze and, you know, sit under the tree.

So those moments, those times, so I use all of those. So in a way, it was not really surprising, but, yeah. It was a pleasure. Yeah. Certainly very organic and, you know, lots of ideas of nostalgia, you know, You know, you you're have whatever you think of as a child that also gets woven in there, I'm sure.

Tell you, I think it was organic, in a way that, I feel it's more more more like a life experience, which also helped me to write a story which is which now some of the people are saying is defying all the stereotypes. Yeah. Oh, you know? Sure. So I think sometimes you just have to look within you or, you know, just look at your own life experiences Right.

Between some stories which are which you gave you will not be able to write with using all the rules of, you know, writing the scripts and all. And that's when you will surprise and, you know, the storytelling will be very unique and unexpected unexpected things will happen in that story.

You're listening to trust me. I know what I'm doing. After a quick break, we'll come back to our conversation with filmmaker, Rohan Parashuram Kanawade.

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I Know What I'm Doing. I'm Abhay Dandekar, and you're listening to Trust Me. I Know What I'm Doing. Let's rejoin our conversation now with filmmaker Rohan Parashuram Kanawade.

You you know, there is such universality in specificity.

Right? So when you are a storyteller, and I'm curious if this film for you, does it magnify your work or even sort of solidify your work as a queer filmmaker? Or does it purely add depth to what maraki cinema is or Indian film, is about, especially to broaden the category and break some stereotypes for what people perceive maraki film or Indian film to be about? Or for that matter, is it actually both of those things? You know, basically, we are not I mean, whenever I was pitching the film, even in the film, we have not even used the word key.

You know? Because I don't want to present this film as a I'm making a film about 2 gay men. It's just about 2 men. And that's when even, you know, even people ask me about the one liner or anything, I always say it's a romance drama between 2 men. Yeah.

Because, you know, it's it's we we wanted to, present these 2 men as, like an any other man. Sexuality is never your identity, you know. Yeah. And that's what we tried it tried here also that we need to normalize sexuality. I know.

Just present these characters as just human beings. So for me also, I I I don't know why people people say that gay filmmaker or anything. It's more than a more a film about humans and human experiences, and human experiences are so diverse. You know? It's just not you can just put them in boxes.

Yeah. And and, hopefully, those themes broaden the experience of what people then really then understand as, again, Indian cinema, Marathi cinema, cinema in general. Right? I mean, it's it's more specific stories that allow us to, you know, really broaden and generalize, what our thought process is. Yeah.

And, thankfully,, when the programmers, watch the film and they were, you know, getting back to us, they always said, you know, this is more than a romance or queer romance. It's more than that. And they were also telling us, you know, please, you know, you know, whenever you are promoting film, please promote it, like, you know don't promote it like a queer film. It's more than that. Every and even heterosexual people, some of my friends who saw the film, they they connected with the film that and they didn't it it was they they were not saying that this is a queer film.

It's just a romance film. And Yeah. Even though the character has certain sexuality, but, you know, they said that some of the experiences that these characters are, you know, experiencing, we are also facing those things and experiencing those things in our life. So it's not only a queer experiences now. Some of the things that we have, used in the film, they are actually universal things.

So, you know, it's more a film, and I would like to have a people recognize me as a filmmaker than just a well, filmmaker. That is, I think, important thing. Yeah. So, you know, well said. And, again, a love story, and a romance drama is part of the human experience, not anything else.

Of the other things, like, even some of the filmmakers only make horror films, we don't call them horror filmmaker. Right? Like, there are you we know some fill they only explore horror themes. Yeah. We when we don't call them a horror filmmaker, why people call filmmakers who explore sexuality in the, you know, why they have to have, you know, that And and yet one you know, sometimes that poses a a an interesting question in that for other filmmakers or people who are trying to tell stories of in the queer space, is it also important to recognize that there is a place and there's space for these kinds of stories?

And and then it's very important for those stories to actually be told. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, you have such a unique background, that you share, of course, with your your parents and your upbringing. And as as you mentioned, this film is an yet another part of the human experience. How does this film, you think, resonate, especially for those who may be youth or, you know, young adults particularly who are in rural spaces, who are in areas where there are, you know, working poor, where there are slums as well. How does this film you think maybe hit some of those people who are are now watching this? I think we made it specifically for that reason because, you know, when I was watching some of the queer films and I always felt, you know, even some of the Indian queer films always had the influence of western queer films because you see all the, you know, things that they tackle, the, conflict with the parents and, you know Yeah.

Coming of age and accepting the sexuality and everything and everything. And then and then on top of that, you know, you always I have always seen that, those films always had this, either city based stories or, you know, stories based in upper class, and that's when I I don't see myself here. I know or I don't see any of my experiences in in these stories, and that's when I where I I when I and then because this film is so much personal storytelling, I had to use some of my own backgrounds of growing up in a slum, and, my economic background and my parents', you know, realities. Like, so and, you know, like, most the biggest population of India lives in, you know, lower class strata or in rural areas. Yeah.

I and that's when I felt, you know, even they watch this film, they will feel connected to it, and they will feel that this is our representation. And and hopefully hopefully, they will find some hope and optimism and warmth in it. And that was our whole point, and I just hope that they feel all these things when they watch it. Right. Right.

And, undoubtedly, you know, hope, optimism, warmth are are going to be a part of that experience. I I'm so curious about this idea. You know, oftentimes, people are learning many things as they go along their journeys. What did what did you have to particularly unlearn about yourself in making this film? What did you maybe have to undo or unpack or unlearn in order to make this film and and present it like this?

I mean, one of the things that specifically was, you know, I had to just be okay with certain things that are not in your control. Like, you know, when I've I had certain ideas about some scenes, like, the nature, the kind of light and everything, and, you know, some of the other things, like, houses the way I wanted. So I had this particular idea that, you know, I wanted both the houses in the village facing each other and all that. One is a a bungalow kind of a house, and the other one is just 2 room house. And they're facing each other, and they are in, like, you know, the they, there there there are mountains around it.

Yeah. And we only found one house and which was in my mother's village. Yeah. And, there was no there were there was no other house, and I was like, no. Okay.

So, you know, we are not shooting here shooting the film here. We have to find both the houses, and we have to find that village. And for 3 years, we are looking for it, and we didn't find it. And finally, may my EP said, Rohan, you know, you will not get everything. Yeah.

You have to do some compromises. You know? Just find some other alternative ideas or, you know, think think something that will work. Otherwise, no. We will not have any location, you know, till the time, we we we reach the shooting dates.

Yeah. And finally, that's when I realized, okay. Yeah. I mean, you know, now there's no point being so rigid about it. That that is how I want it.

Yeah. Let's just be a little flexible and, you know, start thinking about it. That's when I know I I I I went back to my mother's village, and I saw this bungalow. And there was another house, little, away from this bungalow, and it was facing in the other direction. But then I was like, you know, this works.

This house is interesting and this works. Maybe I'll have to tweak some of the scenes a little, but still it works. And that's when I let you know, some of these things I have to keep in mind when I start shooting the film. Yeah. Because, you know, it's like when you need bright light, that's when it becomes cloudy.

When you need cloud, that's when it it becomes bright. And, you know, all these problems happens. And that's another thing I realized, you know, sometimes, you know, you just have to respond to the nature. Yeah. It's in it's not in your control.

And if you start responding to the nature, you will find some really, magical things that you will not you can never think of while writing the film. So Yeah. Some of these things I thought, you know, it's it's important, and I had to finally let go of some things and just embrace whatever was happening on in that moment. Yeah. There's a lot of peace in discovering how important it is to just roll with it and and really understand that, you know, like you said, organic.

Let things sort of flow in that way. I I'll ask you one last thing because, it it's always, an important one for for those people who are either rewatching some of your your previous work, but now getting to know you as a filmmaker and and watching Sabre Borde and and really experiencing this work for the first time. What what do you hope are some of the questions that they're asking themselves after they experience your film? I don't know. I don't know.

I I I don't think, the kind of films that I make will question people. I don't know. I I just feel that I tried to create some experience and, you know, I tried to make films which are, you know, open for interpretation. And I feel, you know, films should be like that because, you know, then every individual can, you know, interpret it the way they want or the way they, experience their life. So, you know, it it it's it's interesting.

And if that film gives them any experience, I'm just I am just always curious to listen to those experiences because, you know, as a filmmaker, you just, make or you write a story or you want whatever that your perspective about life, you do that. After that, it's mostly, you know, I want to hear from audiences. So more than questions, I think if they have an experiences or they felt something, and if it has helped them to look at certain things differently, I would really love to know that rather than, you know, that and yeah. So, all the audience members who are actually listening to it right now, if you get if you watch my films, do, let me know you can connect with me on Instagram and, you know, if you want to share your thoughts and your experiences, I would really love to hear them because, you know, I feel that sometimes when you listen to the audience and, you know, how they pursued certain scenes or the dialogues, you know, a short framing sound is in whatever that is. Sometimes, you know, their experiences can help you understand something else that you never thought about.

Sure. And it might help, me as a writer and director for my next project, you know. So Yeah. Getting learning about their experiences, they will actually help me enrich or help me hone my craft even more for my next project. So, yeah, that's what I I I think should happen.

Well, with those, curiosities, those perspectives, those experiences, and as you mentioned, leaving hopefully with a lot of hope and positivity and optimism. I'm sure people are gonna be enjoying your work for a long time. Rohan, thank you so much for for joining me today. This was really a treat, and I hope we're able to connect down the road. Yes.

Thank you, Abhay. Thank you for calling me on this, podcast. Thank you. Thanks so much, Rohan. And please check out more about him and his film, Sabar Bonda, cactus pears, at rohankanawade.com.

Thanks to you also for sharing any kind review or rating and supporting trust me. I know what I'm doing. My heart and soul are with the City of Angels as it continues to recover, and you can please get involved by going to the many links and resources in the show notes. Till next time. I'm Abhay Dandekar.