Tora’s Husband earns Rima Das the Best Director nomination at Asia Pacific Screen Awards

Nonika Singh

Success rests easily on her shoulders and confidence oozes from every single pore. Celebrated Assamese filmmaker Rima Das whom the rest of India knows best for her much acclaimed Village Rockstars isn’t just another filmmaker.

Like her cinema, she is a breath of fresh air. Patience is not merely a virtue with her, it’s her mojo. While the world is caught in the rat race, eager to take the spotlight, she takes her time, pauses and ponders. Guess what! Not only does it take her years to complete a film, often she goes back to the same scene she may have shot a year ago and reshoots it all over again. Gelling it all together is not easy but then the path she has chosen for herself is less trodden and challenging. Take her latest film Tora’s Husband. She quips, “The amount of time and stress I underwent to make it was so gruelling that my mother says, ‘Rima you could have made four films in the same period’.”

Develop taste

Just talking about how challenging it is to make independent films won’t solve anything. We need to create the right environment where we can develop a taste among cine-goers for all kinds of films right during childhood.

— Rima Das, Director

Of course, the period in which the movie is set and during which it was made, the pandemic, has been one of the most testing times for the mankind. Add to it the fact that the main protagonist happens to be her brother Abhijit Das made her task doubly onerous. The biggest advantage of working with non-actors is, “Time which they have plenty of.”

On a serious note, “They are natural and can be moulded like clay. But the flip side is while professional actors cry and laugh easily non-actors take their own sweet time to emote.”

Having a brother on board as the lead actor meant answering his zillion, ‘whys.’ Nevertheless, she is all praise for the actor in her brother, rather credits him for opening the man’s world for her. She says, “Today when viewers ask me how you were able to tap into male sentiments so beautifully, I realise where most if it is coming from.”

Tora’s Husband, however, is not one thing. She says, “It is about relationship, friendship and love. At the same time as the lead protagonist in the film reminds — ‘we may think the world is one, we all live in our own worlds’.”

As the film is getting rave reviews, has even won her Best Director nomination at Asia Pacific Screen Awards, we wonder if it bothers her when critical appreciation does not translate into more theatrical shows. She nods, only she does not blame audiences for this mismatch. “Our system is such that our viewers don’t have enough opportunities to watch different kinds of cinema.”

A regular at Toronto International Film Festival where Tora’s Husband too premiered, she thinks the line between festival cinema and mainstream is blurring. Incidentally, though she instinctively knew that her Village Rockstars will make the festival circuit, it missed the bus at Oscars in 2019 where it was India’s official entry. She reasons, “Unlike big studio films like Parasite and Roma often we don’t have enough time to market our films and ensure that voting member have seen them.” For cinephiles who have seen and loved Village Rockstars, good news is that she is prepping for its sequel. Mind you, this is no spiritual sequel but will take off from exactly where she left it the last time. Whether the little girl Bhanita Das in the prequel, now a teenager, will turn into a pop star, all Rima reveals is “the film is more about life, about her mother and how often parents really don’t know what do with their children’s talent.”

Freeflowing

Not being trained in filmmaking has been liberating and boon for Rima. “There is no pressure. I can treat every frame like a painting and don’t have to worry about technicalities.” Producer, director, writer, editor and cinematographer for this one-woman-army, making cinema has been the biggest learning ground, “It’s like I have my own film school.”

No easy approach please!

An Assamese, she is certainly not happy with the representation of North-Eastern characters in mainstream cinema. To filmmakers she advises not to look at everything through the prism of commerce and says, “Don’t follow the easy approach, do some research, pay heed to the sensibility and culture of the land, not just of North-East but whichever regional flavour you intend to introduce.”