Director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan on his film not being screened at IFFI despite a court order

“This is no longer about Sanal Kumar Sasidharan or S Durga. It has become a Constitutional issue about a democratic principle under threat. It sets a precedent, of a government setting rules without listening to the courts,” says an incensed Sasidharan when I meet him in Goa at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), 2017. Since his arrival in Panjim, the filmmaker has been attracting dozens of young film buffs and journalists who have just one question: “Will S Durga get at least one screening?”

Dressed in a grey T-shirt and sporting a long beard, Sasidharan looks irreverent and casual, belying the fierceness with which he has upped the ante on the debate around his film by taking the matter to court. It’s been a controversial IFFI this year. Besides S Durga, the Ministry withdrew one other film from screening as well, leading the IFFI Indian Panorama jury chairman to resign in protest.

A technicality

“When I went to see the festival director, we were locked in two rooms and the media was outside. You can’t imagine how hostile the ambience was; it felt like we were in the enemy camp,” Sasidharan says. S Durga was finally not aired despite the court order, because the CBFC cited a technicality over its changed title.

Perhaps Sasidharan gets the courage to go to court because he is a lawyer himself. He quotes the famous P. Jagjivan Ram vs. S. Rangarajan case where “the Supreme Court declared that law and order is not an excuse to impede the right to speech and freedom of expression. My film was screened at the Mumbai Film Festival and played to full houses in New Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram. There were no law and order issues there. This is just a lame excuse.”

Born in Thiruvananthapuram into a middle-class family of moderate means, Sasidharan says it was his dream to make cinema, but he had to study law because of family pressure and a father who fancied his son in a respectable profession. “I too thought that being an advocate would give me social status,” he says.

Launch pad

While in college, Sasidharan had been a member of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. “I was drawn to some principles of Hinduism because I used to read a lot on the subject and I came from a deeply religious family,” he says. He even supported the idea of demonetisation and was instantly branded as a Sanghi in Kerala. Ironical then to see him take on the “authoritarian” and “fascist” BJP at the Centre.

“I started watching movies and my world view changed. The kind of life I lead reflects my politics. I do not live in five star hotels or dwell on dreams. I have stopped participating in religious function. I had to face a lot of conflicts, especially within the family.” Once he had settled into a legal career, he began to approach filmmakers to assist them. “They asked me to go back to law and not waste my life in cinema. It’s a dangerous profession, they said.”

But he persisted and made a short film called Wonder World, having formed Kazhcha Film Forum in 2001 to crowdfund the project. His career in law continued in parallel, and he flew to the Gulf for a job. It was then that he got a call from a producer who had seen his short film on YouTube and offered to produce his next work. Sasidharan returned to Kerala and hasn’t looked back since.

He went on to make feature films such as Oraalppokkam, which won the FIPRESCI award and the award for Best Director at the International Film Festival of Kerala. His Ozhivudivasathe Kali, on five friends getting together to drink on an election holiday, was noticed for unmasking double standards in society and was bought by Netflix.

He not only uses his film forum for distributing his brand of indie cinema but also launched an interesting venture called Cinema Vandi in 2015, an alternative distribution channel. During its first tour of three months across Kerala, Cinema Vandi screened Oraalppokkam in 110 venues. “It’s an ideal launch platform for young filmmakers, and they can approach us for any kind of creative assistance,” he says. With S Durga, Sasidharan appears to have hit the big time. It has done the rounds of international film festivals, won a Hivos Tiger award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and played at the Singapore International Film Festival. He is in discussion with sales agents to distribute it in Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australia.

“So many people in audiences everywhere have told me how much they related to the story. I am convinced that cinema talks to the universe. But the people here don’t have time to watch my work, they only have time to tarnish my image. If we go on like this a little longer, we will resemble a Talibanised country,” he says.

Truly indie

There might have been a surge in indie filmmaking in the past three or four years, but a film like S Durga still finds it hard to garner solidarity on the kind of massive scale as a Padmavati. Even fellow indie filmmakers can support him only to a certain extent. “They don’t want to antagonise the festival circuits where they get to screen their movies,” he says.

“Commercial cinema depends on the common man who responds instantly to what he watches on screen, and the industry is confident the common man will stand up for them. Whereas the indie movie maker is looking for help from the government and is worried to go against it.” This is what makes Sasidharan possibly the country’s only truly indie filmmaker, not just in the themes he picks but also in how he finances and distributes them and, finally, fearlessly fights for them.

Given the impassioned battle he is putting up, it’s easy to mistake Sasidharan for an activist filmmaker, but he is far from it, he says. “I am deeply influenced by filmmakers such as Michael Haneke, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Krzysztof Kieślowski whose Dekalog inspired me to make a similar movie,” he says.

“I think it is pure art that lasts. Activist or propaganda filmmaking will just come and go.”

parshathy.nath@thehindu.co.in