E28 • The Healing Power of Film • SUBHADRA MAHAJAN, dir. of ‘Second Chance’ at AFI following Busan + Karlovy Vary

Mumbai-based director Subhadra Mahajan discusses her debut feature film ‘Second Chance’ which just had its Hollywood premiere at AFI, following a World premiere at Karlovy Vary earlier this year. Past inspirations include her love for the Iranian New Wave and Andrea Arnold’s ‘Fish Tank’.

She speaks on her filmmaking journey, influenced by classic Hollywood films, and reflects on her storytelling process, character development, and the collaborative nature of filmmaking. The discussion also delves into the themes of healing, nature, and the unlikely friendships made while making films. 

Subhadra emphasizes the importance of breaking traditional filmmaking rules to foster creativity, the challenges of working with a low budget, and the significance of community in film festivals. 

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Chapters

• 0:01 Past Present Feature, Hosted by Marcus Mizelle
• 0:19 Introducing Filmmaker Subhadra Mahajan, dir. of 'Second Chance' at AFI
• 1:01 Early Influences and Film Education
• 6:12 Early Filmmaking Experiences
• 9:10 Subhadra's Bio / Filmography + Collaborating with Pan Nalin
• 12:37 Character Development Process
• 16:24 Subverting Narrative Expectations
• 19:25 'The Last Film Show' + 'E.T.' + 'Cinema Paradiso' - Child Protagonists
• 22:05 'Second Chance' Synopsis + Origin
• 25:08 The Healing Power of Film & Nature
• 27:53 The Artistic Choice of Black and White - 'La Haine', 'Roma', '8 1/2'
• 31:39 Casting Non-Actors + Using Auto-Biographical Elements to Create Realism
• 34:47 Shooting with a Limited Crew + Being a First Time Director + Shooting Chronologically
• 37:52 Getting Creative with the Shooting Schedule
• 41:55 'Second Chance' - Post-Production
• 44:17 World Premiere at Karlovy Vary + The Significance of Film Culture
• 46:57 Hollywood Premiere at AFI + Cultural Reflections in Film Festivals
• 48:40 Past Inspiration: 'Fish Tank' by Andrea Arnold + The Iranian New Wave
• 50:57 Filmmaking Advice: "Open Your Eyes and Look Around, There's Inspiration Everywhere"

Transcript

Marcus Mizelle (00:02)
Welcome to the Past Present Feature podcast.

Marcus Mizelle (00:19)
In this episode, Mumbai-based director Subhadra Mahajan discusses her debut feature film, Second Chance,

its Hollywood premiere at AFI following a world premiere at Carl Evivari earlier this year. Past inspirations include her love for the Iranian New Wave and Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank. Subhadra speaks on her filmmaking journey influenced by classic Hollywood films

and reflects on her storytelling and character development process and the collaborative nature of filmmaking.

The discussion also delves into the themes of healing, nature, and the unlikely friendships made while making films.

Subhadra emphasizes the importance of breaking traditional filmmaking rules to foster the challenges of working with the low

And the significance of in film festivals.

Marcus Mizelle (01:01)
Where are you at right now? I'm in Mumbai. Okay. And you're from Northern India? Is that correct? Yeah. I'm from North India. I'm from Himachal Pradesh, which is a small state, very much in the North of India, nestled in the Himalayas. I just looked it up before I got on and it looks beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. Yeah. I'm just looking at the pictures now. Damn. Very different from Bombay.

Was there an early age where like film came into your life? Where you fell in love with it or how did it come about? Yeah, I grew up in a fairly anglicized family and it's going to be pretty funny when I tell you about my early exposure to film because I don't think you could see any of it in my work. But I was brought up on a lot of Hollywood classics and a lot of Hollywood from the 70s. I don't know the first few films that we used to have VHS's at that time when I was really young.

my mom would put on The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. I was also brought up on a lot of Disney fairy tales. Okay. Yeah, controversial now. They have disclaimers in the front of most of them. I've been showing my five-year-old a lot of these older films and Lion King and they are powerful. They are still so well made, so powerful, so mythic. Crazy. Yeah, I think mythic is the key word here because they stick to those basics of storytelling that is going to appeal to you even when you're really young or...

even if you're watching it, re-watching it when you're much older. Because it's so universal, that form, right? Would it be considered kind of Greek as far as way back when? They've been doing it forever. The Odyssey, for example, that's mythic. Yeah, it just works. I didn't get to watch your film, but I did watch the trailer. I want to watch it at AFI. I'm like seven minutes away from there. So I want to see it then. What I did see, the three-minute trailer, it's beautiful. It's so well shot. And the mood and the vibe and the atmosphere of it is very much there.

It's very, I don't know, meditative in a way. And a touch observational as well, which I really enjoy these days more than just rushing through something. It takes its time. I hope you're going to be in that mood when you come to watch it. Yeah, well, you know, I mean, it's like the other end of that spectrum is just all the stuff on US streaming where it's literally the opposite. There's no satisfaction to be had. I'm really enjoying these film festival movies. This is like medicine for me, this podcast and being able to see these films. It's just like sustenance versus junk food.

as far as like most of the stuff. I have these conversations with people all the time. What have you watched recently? And now I'm starting to have those conversations less because nobody's seen much of anything they like. And again, I'm talking about my world here. I love you filmmakers, you're international filmmakers mostly right now because you are holding it down, keeping it quality. Thank you. And I think you've had some really cool guests because I've been following your podcast from the first time you moved out to me, which was just pre-Kalo Vipari.

And then a lot of my colleagues, a lot of the fellow filmmakers at Kaluwagari were interviewed by you. And I'd seen some of their films and I wanted to listen to the interviews. So then I just got into it and... Thank you for listening. It's been really interesting. I didn't know what to expect when I started. I just figured I'd take a chance. And I had been thinking about it for three and a half years. And finally I pulled the trigger when Tribeca announced their lineup. And then right after Tribeca, that was really when the podcast took shape. We have some footing here. What am I about? What do I want to talk about?

Who do I want to connect with? And Karlovy Vary, I'm like, It's like craft is at front of mind, I feel like, with European filmmakers. Not just European filmmakers, international filmmakers right now, I feel like, more than ever. And what a cool festival that Karlovy is. They really do honor the craft and storytelling and fresh ways of transcending what we've already seen before. So many good films. I have favorites, but I'm not going to say any. What did you see that you liked at Karlovy?

At Kalobi, I think my favorite in the section where my film was at the Proxima competition. So I tried to watch a few of them and I really liked Windlass. I think it was an exceptional film. yeah, Pavel's, yes. I interviewed him. Yeah, I know, I listened to that. He's really good and he's an exceptional filmmaker. That's pretty obvious, even though this is just a second. And also The Stranger was also really good, which won the competition. Yeah. I interviewed him, as you probably know too, but they weren't able to get me a strainer and I really want to see that.

It's seven total takes, right? Yes, it is. And I don't know how the hell he pulled it off. I have to say, within those seven different takes and each of them follow a different story set in a hotel room, some were, for me, a lot better than the others. But I don't want to spoil much for you, but some of them are just incredible. I don't know how he did them. Just so exciting. even just before you see the film, you hear about the approach and the intent and like the design of that film. That's not the first time it's been done, but it's definitely always exciting to have a filmmaker challenge themselves that way.

And also the audience. You're just going to get something different and fresh. Enough about other people's movies. What is your first memory of being a filmmaker? Was there a moment? Was there a film? What was it? No, I don't think there is a memory of me being a filmmaker because just because of where I grew up, it was always considered as something you spectate and you don't participate in. You know what I mean? It was just so far-fetched as a career or as something that you actually do.

It was watched for films or watched for entertainment and loved, but it was never really considered something you can do much, much later. So my first experience or memory of being a filmmaker was probably when I was dabbling around in college with some student films, which were pretty bad. You go to film school and college or what? Yes, I did a bachelor's in mass media. So mass media included a lot of things, journalism, advertising, public relation and film. Gotcha. It was the same for me. I'm from North Carolina, small town, but nobody made movies.

I think it helped me because my imagination was so big. I was so bored being in the middle of nowhere and my imagination took over. And if I was born in a bigger city and like more stimulation, I might not have invested so much creative energy into my home videos and stuff that we made. Those little home videos, I mean, first short films and they were also very terrible. But there were some things where I look back and I'm like, that was pretty smart, that part. Do you feel like that with some of your earlier stuff or like your instincts were like really sharp?

in some ways. Apparently, yes. I remember the first student film I made. It did deal with human connection, which I do in Second Chance as well. And it did appeal to the audience that was there at that time. So perhaps there was something which I was inherently good at. I think I have more memories of me being a storyteller when I was much younger, because I would write a lot. So I would write short stories, or would make up stories for my younger brother.

We would put up plays and make up really strange plays and direct the rest of the family to act in them. What was one of the titles of your plays? It was an opposite of Cinderella. The actual person who needed rescuing was the evil stepmother because Cinderella was actually evil. Ooh, nice. Anti-hero. Before it was popular.

When you go to film school or make movies or just learn more about filmmaking, do you feel like sometimes things can be lost by trying to play by the rules or what you think the rules are too much? I'm projecting because I'm thinking about my own self where you start learning about screenwriting and proper structure, quote unquote. And then I get to a point where it's, is stiff. I'm honoring the structure too much. And so now I've went back the other way. Question is, do you feel like something that can be lost when you like,

dedicate too much to what are deemed the right way to do things. Absolutely. I totally agree that you can get completely stifled. Your creativity and your original vision can get killed if you're sticking to the rules too much. I think the only way around that is to go down that path and learn the rules well enough to know how to break them in the right way and be equally effective. That's probably...

the way I've learned it. Yeah, it's like this leap of faith. It's so funny because like the first movie that we made, I didn't understand genres at all. I didn't even really know what that meant. I just thought about the video store and the sections like drama, comedy. There's so much like stuff that I would have ever done if I would have known more. Second Chance is your debut feature film, correct? Yes, that's right. Okay, I'm gonna read your bio. Of course. Sabhadra Mahajan.

Born and raised in Machal Pradesh, which is in North India. You currently reside in Mumbai. You have a long collaboration with filmmaker Pan Nalan, most notably in co-writing Angry Indian Goddesses of 2015, which premiered at Toronto. Was runner up for the Gauravsh audience choice award and released theatrically in over 60 countries. Congrats. It won accolades for being groundbreaking in its truthful, non-apologetic depiction of womanhood in contemporary India. Other films she has worked on.

with Nailin include Faith Connections, Beyond the Known World, and Last Film Show, which opened the spotlight section of Tribeca Film Festival in 2021 and was India's official entry to the Oscars of 2023. This is your second chance as your debut feature film. First of all, Tribeca Film Festival in 2021, I'm just thinking COVID, right? The selection process for Tribeca for all festivals at that time, I'm sure it was very limiting and they had to really be tight with their game because it was all scaled back. Tribeca is one of the few festivals

It just caught that sweet spot between waves. They had a lot of actual screenings rather than virtual screenings, which is why I think Talen chose to premiere Tribeca because he didn't want to have a virtual premiere. I see. It just like, what? And then, this would just be for a few weeks. And then the rest is history. Second question is, co-directing with someone. My first feature, I co-directed with someone. And the film came out great, I think, because of it. And there was like this tag team.

Doubleheader, I focused on this, he focused on that. But for your experience, you've done a lot of collaborating. How did that come about? Because that's a tricky territory, at least from my experience. It's extremely tricky. You're right about that. And I think the only reason it works with Nullin is because I used to assist him more than co-direct with him. I co-write with him quite a lot. But on set, there has to be one director. And I can be an associate at times.

and a co-writer, but I think it's wiser to be one director, of course, unless you're the Coen brothers. My situation after the first week, I proposed, how about I work with the actors and you work with the cinematographer? If you had to boil it down, it's ultimately two things. It's how to tell the story visually and how to tell it through the actors. Would you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. On set, least. On set, yes. And so we were able to divide those two up.

Even back then, I'm like, this seems to make sense. You're more the gear guy anyway. You're more about like the lenses and stuff anyways. But I want to talk to the actress. Can we please do that? And it was great. It did that work out. It worked out really good. Yeah. Second Chance. What would you consider to be your most exciting or fulfilling filmmaking moment of your life so far? The Side Second Chance, The Side Second Chance, yeah.

I think it would be writing and being part of a film like Angry Indian Goddesses. Well, I was like a first assistant director for last film show. So both these were pretty monumental experiences as far as my career in filmmaking was concerned. Angry Indian Goddesses, it was a very unconventionally written film because we've really developed characters more than screenplay. We didn't really write screenplay at all. We had a broad structure.

And then because we developed the characters so well and we workshopped the actresses who were playing those characters, we let them improvise a lot and it was fairly fluid. But we always knew exactly what we wanted. It was really interesting. And then, of course, a lot of the story was pretty much retold on the edit table eventually. So, In The Goddesses was a great experience. Can you tell me about your character development process, at least with that film?

It started with a lot of research and I tend to research a lot. I'm quite a geek. I study and I like to read. The process for Angreen, the character development of Angreen goddesses was reading up a lot about the history as well as the status of women in current day India and conducting a lot of interviews with women across all sections and across all age groups to understand what's making them tick right now.

What are their problems? What are their deepest desires? What are their hidden secrets? And what really makes them angry was always like the ultimate question we would ask them. And some of the things that we learned from reality was way more exciting and dramatic and entertaining than a film could be. And also it's India by nature. We are dramatic and theatrical people, I think. So the characters of Andrianian Goddesses started from a lot of research.

And eventually, once we cast the actresses who were going to play the parts that we'd written out, there was like a whole round of tweaks to make sure that the actresses were 100 % comfortable in those characters. Certain minor things were changed, certain tweaks were added, and it included everything from the deepest traits of their personalities to something really superficial to whether she would prefer tea or coffee or the way she would do her hair.

So it was a completely all-rounded character development. It sounds like you started from the designing principle or whatever you call it. The most powerful element of any story in any film, right? It's like, is this about? What am I trying to say? It sounds like you started with that. Absolutely. And then you build it out from there, autobiographically almost, pulling from real life. Makes sense. You know those characters well enough, you throw them into any situation and you know how they're going to react because you know them that well.

And that's what builds the authenticity of that screenplay. Everything is an extension of that big thing, that big seed in the middle. Angry Indian Goddesses 2015. Hidden secrets between friends began to surface during the fun and frenzy of an impromptu bachelorette celebration. So moving on from character development to, I guess, the plot, how did that look for you with this project when you were writing this? Because I was writing it along with Nalin.

And we had another co-writer on, Dilip. And then we also had an associate come in for some particular parts. In India, we didn't really have female buddy films. So the idea was to make an Indian film with a group of female friends. Okay. Was it more of an ensemble or is it just a two buddies? No, it's an ensemble. There's seven women. Okay, got you. We've had a lot of really big films which are like three male best friends and they're coming of age and their journey. Step aside, dudes. It's time for the women to come in.

2015 too, everybody started waking up a little bit to some things, right? Absolutely. I felt like it was just time. Actually, at least in India, it started maybe a year or two later. But it was the right time to have a feminine film. Initially, we started with this idea of just bringing these women together and putting them in a really fun, mad setting and letting them just be free because also in India, we are a very patriarchal society, right? And there's a strong gender bias.

So there are lot of social restrictions on the way women should behave and conduct themselves. And we just wanted to free them of all that. So what better than a bachelorette party? It's also set in Goa, which is like one of the most liberal parts of India. And there were women from like pretty much all walks of life and of a particular age group. But then we also had a really old woman and we had some of the young daughter and we had them across religions. And it was really fun. And then Nalind, who was the director and the

pretty much the main writer, decided that, okay, so at the end of the film, there's not going to be a marriage because of the bachelorette party, so it's going to end in a marriage. He's decided that there's going to be a death. I love that. Because we've seen it a million times with The Other Way, right? Yeah, absolutely. And my initial reaction to that was I was a little skeptical, probably because I'd already been thinking for so many months and leading up towards that. But it also came from instances of the safety of women in India.

But at that particular time, there were two or three really brutal gang rape cases that had come up. Without getting into the horrific details, we just keep repeating themselves, unfortunately, again and again. There's just been one a few months ago in Kolkata and West India. It just felt like it would just be impossible to tell a story about any woman in India without touching upon the subject. So why not just go bank into it? So I don't think I should spoil the film for you, but it does.

More than halfway later, take a extremely brutal tragic turn. So it starts as a really fun, lighthearted, but then it goes deeper and then it turns. It didn't go down very well with everyone. Let me tell you, a lot of people were like, but I came here to have fun and watch these girls enjoy themselves. You switch the genre, you dust till dawned it? Yeah, absolutely. Gosh, when you don't expect it. Some of the best movies too don't give you what you think you want. They give you something to walk away with and think about. I remember the first time I saw 2001, A Space Odyssey.

most of Kubrick's films where I'm like, what? And now I have a giant poster of 2001, a space odyssey on my wall because it's so ahead of whatever my brain was. I wasn't ready for it, but thank you, sir. Thank you for challenging me. Don't just indulge me. me something that I need. Yeah. And that goes back to what you were saying, getting stuck in rules. Yeah. You know what you talking about earlier when, yeah. Expectations are going by the roll of books. Sometimes you really have to break them. And that's so needed nowadays. God, you see it so much now.

And it took me forever. I'm stubborn. But I switch to docs. also, once I put a movie out that was very structured and I put so much into it, this is gonna work. This is gonna be great. this is gonna be perfect. I spent so much time on the structure. Yeah, no. I wish I could put it back in. But that was the lesson for me as far as, all right, dude, loosen up. Go with the flow. Go with your instincts. Teach your own. Everybody's got their own thing. And rules are meant to be broken. All right, what happened between collaborating with Nolan and...

leading up to your feature debut, Second Chance. In between that space, you did a bunch of films. Yeah, I worked on last film show again with Nalin, but I was pretty much on shoot. So my great learning experience over there was the technicalities of how a shoot happens and logistical nightmares and just how to make things happen when all the odds are against you, I think.

So that was more from that aspect of filmmaking, which I think is extremely important. Because if you don't have a handle on that, you're not going to be able to make your first film, especially not independently. I don't think back by the studio either. You have to know how to handle those challenges and how to make the best within them. last film show. When the magic of movies conquers nine-year-old Sameh's heart, he moves heaven and earth in pursuit of his 35-millimeter dreams. However, he's unaware of the heartbreaking times that await him. First thing that comes to my mind, cinema paradiso.

Absolutely, course. Which is a universal story. It's so gorgeous and I don't want to say perfect, but it's good. Just the nostalgia too, the power of nostalgia and also a hero that's a child that's young. Something about that is very powerful too. Child going through struggle is such a thing you can get behind. But whenever it's something that's also endearing, like ET, I showed my kid ET the other day. yeah, wow. ET for the first time.

And besides all the other things that are going on in that movie that make it simple but amazing, it's an empathetic character. A child is an empathetic character. You can get behind them. Last film show, this was submitted for the Oscar. Yeah, it was India's official entry for the Oscars of 2023, I think. And so you learned how a big set functions? Is that what you're saying? A big production?

I was pretty much running the set, so the wheels of how that works, as well as, like you said, it's like the kind of story that everyone relates to, everyone who loves film absolutely relates to and just generally because there's a child protagonist somewhere we all have this child with dreams within us. It's a story that immediately grabs you as well as it is a love letter to cinema. It's a lot like the cinema parody. So up till about halfway and then it takes a different turn. You should watch the film. What kind of turn did this one take?

It resulted in kind of the death of celluloid. So it was set at the time where celluloid converted to digital. And it's very much about nostalgia. I'm going to watch this. You must watch the film. I think you should be able to watch it on Netflix or on Amazon in the States. It was distributed by Samuel Goldwyn in America. Nice. I loved them. They're hanging in there, holding on, putting some good stuff, higher end indies out.

And it's funny because some people are like, don't make movies about movies or about actors or whatever. When you look at it, I think people do want that. They do love that. It's meta, but it works. They almost work, yeah. So, last film show. Cinema parodies. When's the last time you watched that movie? It's been really long, but I'm really excited because in three or four days, somewhere towards the end of the month, we're having a Italian cinema retrospective in South Bombay, in Mumbai.

and they are going to be playing Cinema Paradiso, a restored print of it. Amazing. So I'm going to go watch it again. On film. On film in a very old school art deco theater called Regal in Colaba. Gotta go to that. When is that? I'm flying over. Yeah, it's about three days from now, so I think you can make it and you'll get over your jet lag by then as well. I think the first time I saw that movie was in a theater in New Orleans.

It's time to talk about second chance. Let read the synopsis. That's the variety synopsis.

I have written, which is buried away somewhere now, but there's one that Kahlo Vivari has written, there's one that Busan has written, there's one that Adelaide has written, so there are lots of versions of that. Isn't it fun to get somebody else's synopsis or like logline or whatever, break down from your project? yeah, it's so exciting. It's like getting script analysis back or something, it's, wait, this sounds better. Absolutely, I was so happy when I, Premia was a Kahlo Vivari, so I was very happy when I read that programming note because I think it was very well written. It captured like the essence of

what the film was about without giving away too much, which I don't want to give away in the film as you watch it. Let's read that then real quick while we're here if you don't mind. Go for it. You can find it in the Kaluvavari website.

A surprisingly strong bond develops between them which cannot be broken, not even by the arrival of someone who drives Nia straight back into her trauma. This visually mesmerizing film offers an authentic and vivid depiction of the process of coping with female pain and demonstrates that a second chance might emerge where we least expect it. Very well written. Visually mesmerizing, those two and a half minutes that I saw, those are the two words for sure that nail that. I'm not even just talking about the cinematography, it's the atmosphere. I love the ambiguity of when you're watching a trailer like that where you don't know what's happened to this character, you don't know what.

what's going on. You could sense the solace. Solace is a word that comes to mind. But it was very Tarkovsky-ish vibes for me. think the opening shot of that trailer where they're looking through the doorframe felt like it was in the other side of the world. Just that combination kind of reminded me of like the mirror. And I brought this up the last interview. I had a Tarkovsky comparison. is a huge compliment. Thank you. Tarkovsky for me was my kind of first entry point into what else was out there as an American.

Film watcher. I feel like Tarkovsky was one of those firsts where it's like, this is an art form for real. I don't need to understand. I don't need to be given like some, this is what you think thing. Now this is more so just a feeling and a vibe and which pulls you in. And then I can form my own opinion. Anyways, so second chance. I'm curious about how Karlo Vivari went, but before that, like why this movie? Why did you need to make this movie? Is it autobiographical or what? It's inspired heavily by my own life.

It's a story about a young woman who faces the first trauma of her life and she finds healing by spending time in nature in the Himalayas and also in unlikely friendships that she forges with the local community there. I think there were a few motives behind telling this story. One of the biggest ones was I really wanted to tell a story about healing because I feel like the kind of world that we're living in right now, it's like very frantic and chaotic and very instant.

And I feel like often young people who face a personal tragedy can feel the weight of it like something that they may never recover from. So I think healing is something that's wondrous and inexplainable process. We don't really know how it works, but it works. And I wanted to tell a story about a young person healing from a trauma. I also wanted to tell a story about our relationship with nature because I feel like as a human race, we're growing more and more self-obsessed and somewhere

There's this eternal cycle of mother nature which functions like far beyond human control. And I wanted to tell a story about unlikely friendships because we live in a highly isolated world, a highly divided world. And we're so constantly reminded about all the things that divide us that somewhere we have to be reminded of the things that unite us. That just makes me want to get in my car and drive two hours to Big Bear right now and just sit. The nervous system isn't ready.

We're not conditioned for this. And then adding on the digital avatars that we end up creating to market our movies, et cetera. my God. How do you actually unplug? It's very important, yeah. And I think that's something that's very universal. It's a nice reminder, a simple universal reminder of what you just told me, what your film's about, which is trauma, just life. Like it can beat you down. It will beat you down. And it will.

We're humans and we're in this world. You don't have to sit on the couch and sulk or have a victim mindset or in this story go out into the world. I'm from North Carolina and it's very green, it's very spread out and I was bored as hell when I was there. And I'd be bored as hell if I was there right now. But sometimes I wish I could just go to a door and just sit there in my old backyard for an hour. I just know that would be medicine for sure. It is medicine. It is medicine for the soul. Yeah, absolutely. And to tie it in.

briefly again with North Carolina, I'm working on this short documentary about the indigenous people from there. And of course, they had Mother Nature at their center and it was a very matriarchal society too. For whatever reason, they respected the earth and like Mother Nature and such obviously wonderful ways to be in like how much that gave back. I think there's a lot we need to learn from indigenous cultures, whatever the means of the indigenous cultures in all parts of the world, whether it's the indigenous community members that I used when I was shooting the film.

as well as in different parts of the world, whatever it means. Especially with the challenges of climate change, which I mean, I feel are very real because I've experienced them firsthand in the Himalayas, where I come from, on a growing basis. It's something we need to take very seriously right now. Okay, second chance. Production-wise, how was it? Two-part question. Why shoot in black and white? And thank you for shooting in black and white. okay.

Let me take Black and White first. As you can imagine, it's a very distinctive decision to shoot in black and white. So I get this question a lot. Always my answer is from the beginning, from the very inception of this story, when it just came to me as a concept in my head. It was always a black and white film. Right from the start.

So when I think about it, the primary reason is like the journey of my protagonist, whose name is Nia, the young woman whose name is Nia. It's that of finding light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. And I felt this would be well expressed in black and white. And also the philosophy of the film, it's a very Eastern philosophy of finding light in darkness and understanding that light and darkness coexist with one another.

It's expressed, I think, beautifully in the yin-yan of this beautiful Himalayan environment that the film is set in. Those are some of the reasons, I think, make it a good story to be told in black and white. And also, cinematically now, I've grown up in this area. So obviously, I've seen it in all seasons, and I also do a bit of photography. So I've photographed it in various formats through the seasons. And I found, in particular, that this winter,

in black and white in this particular valley just makes for very striking and a very cinematic visual, know, because they're the white snow peaks and they're dry branches of the apple trees. contrasts are popping, I would think. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a very high contrast between light and shadow as well. So when it's snowing, of course, it's white. But otherwise, it's when crystal clear days, the skies are so blue, they translate as like a kind of a dark. Yeah. So I think it makes a very interesting cinematic visual.

Also, every time anyone comes to the Himalayas, they just go full on with the color and it's completely saturated because it is so beautiful, right? It is beautiful and you want to see it in all its colors. As well as with the local people, the local people whom she makes friends with who are like the other two people in the film. They're tribals, they're indigenous people, so they dress very colorfully. And I think that's just would have been very distracting in the story because then you start viewing it like a National Geographic documentary.

And I wanted to show the characters and their internal world and their journeys more than keeping them as characters or specimens of a particular culture. And you like to mix it up. You like to go in the other direction that people don't expect, it seems, with your previous scripts. You've shooting in black and white versus the obvious choice of color. And black and white too, like the contrast that it gives. It's like the simple but strong spectrum that you can operate on, right? Just like a good story.

in a way, where it's simple as gold and having a strong spectrum, whether it be light versus dark or whatever it might be. I think it's a representation of that as well. It just fits hand in hand. Black and white totally just pulls your eye more so to the design of the framing and the design within the frame as well. The shapes become more defined with black and white. One of my favorite films is black and white and God, I keep bringing it up. didn't know how much I it until saw it. La Hayne, the French film. okay, yeah. Yes, La 95, that movie.

Yeah, and of course Roma, mean, we can't ignore Roma. think Roma was just breathtaking. Eight and half is probably the best looking. Filini's black and white is so thick and rich, right? Very dark darks. don't know. Yeah, his blacks are very black. Okay, so second chance. So shooting besides black and white. What did you shoot on camera? We shot on a red Komodo, which is a really small camera. nice.

One of the reasons is for this particular choice of camera is we shot with a very small crew and it was a very documentary style shoot in that manner because all the actors in Second Chance are non-actors. None of them have acted before. My lead actress is now studying to be an actress, but before this she had no experience. In fact, she's studying at Lee Strasburg in LA. Okay, nice. She'll be there for the premiere and you'll probably see. Amazing.

This is a common thread I feel like with lot of international films, at least the conversations I've had where there's been small crews, which I so appreciate and love and can relate to, and then also non-actors or people with limited experience, which I can also relate to. You guys are getting into the best film festivals in the world. That approach, there's something there. I think the goal and the success achieved is authenticity, right? That's the goal.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Authenticity for me as a filmmaker is really important, especially in Second Chance, where I'm telling a story which I claim everyone can relate to as this young person from the city who's just beaten down by life and, you know, suffered a kind of a betrayal or, you know, a trauma, and everyone has to relate to it, so it has to be real enough, right? As well as I'm setting it in a place where I belong. So I know this place inside out. I know the way the people talk. I know the looks on their faces. I know the...

accent of their language, just the kind of things they do. The first litmus test that an actor would have to pass would just be too hard. They wouldn't know the world. Autobiographical elements are such a huge thing to access and use, especially in fiction filmmaking now, because it's not always been realistic type filming. Like what, in the 50s, going into the 60s, it shifted from theatrical acting to kind of realism, along with films themselves, Italian neorealism and all the fresh new wave. Italian neorealism. But now it's very...

much realism wins the day. Just feel like the best films are very much just authentic, like realistic, like you have to have that. And I think how do you achieve that, especially on a small budget and not play the game of packaging, trying to sell your movie with a name, which is a whole other thing that I don't like to do. But as far as just finding authenticity and just connecting with the audience in a real way, documentaries is much easier because it's already there and all you have to do is do nothing a lot of times, just try to stand back. But when you're creating it,

in fiction, the technique, the casting, who you put in that role is a huge part of fiction filmmaking. It's gigantic. Yeah. And for me, I had this added burden of responsibility, I would say, which I took on very happily because the place where the film is set and shot, it's hardly been represented in cinema before. And me being from there, I wanted to make sure that it's represented as authentically as possible, which is why I knew I needed non-actors.

and I needed real locations. And that leads you to shoot as documentary style as possible because you can't intimidate non-actors with like hundred member crew. The same thing as filming now, especially with the sensitivity of these cameras. Even back in the sixties when they were making these observational documentaries with no lights. It looks great. Trying to control too much is a mistake a lot of times, right? You just let it be and just let the camera dance with the space. Because your film looks beautiful. And I would be convinced if you told me it was a big 30 or 40 person crew.

Well, let me tell you how big the crew was. So we were 12 crew members, three main actors and three drivers. Amazing. So of course you had a small lighting team and all that. But either way, it's like a beautiful movie, beautiful looking film. I can't wait to see it at AFI. So tell me about any other thing during production that's worth talking about. I can quickly tell you about being a first time director without a short film, even though I haven't really good producer on board.

It was very difficult to get any funding, so we literally went out and shot this on a shoestring budget, which is made out of savings. The production nightmares that we faced were like colossal, because everything boils down to either you have time or you have money. We had neither, because it's a winter film, it's set in the winter. And nowadays with climate change, like God knows where winter's disappeared half of the time anyway.

So we would have a weather prediction, okay, it's going to snow tomorrow, so we shoot these scenes and it would be bright and sunny and then we'd have to change everything around. I didn't have time. Also, me and the DOP and the lead actress had COVID. Two days after we started shooting and we had to shut down production and restart again. Thankfully, we restarted again, like all of us recovered enough to restart. We had this really tiny crew, which is great because it's really intimate, but everybody has to do a lot of work.

So everybody, like one person is doing five people's jobs. So it does get tiring. I was gonna ask you, do they know what to expect going in as far as the cast and crew? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think that's key, right? 100%. They knew and they were like, yes, we still want to do it. And then the first week they're really enthusiastic. And then the second week they get a little tired. And by the third week they're like, we want to go home. We don't care if you finished or not. I am done. Damn yous, I'm hard. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now it's hard work. Yeah.

But okay, sorry. No, and also the conditions that we shot in, is, we're talking about the Himalayas. So like our highest dude shot was like 10,000 feet. You can't breathe up there. At least if you're not from there. The coldest morning of shoot was minus 20 degrees C, which is like minus four, I think Fahrenheit, if you convert it. So it was a very tough shoot, but I think I had an incredible crew because they managed to.

stay with me till the end and the cast as well. Shout out to the crew for sure. What was your production schedule like? Did you shoot in chunks? Traditionally, how did that look for you? So I was very certain that I wanted to shoot chronologically because I was shooting with non-actors. At least like for my lead protagonist, she's a young woman like me who's educated and she can understand, she can read a script and then I can pick out scenes. The other two in the trailer, like the old lady, she can't read or write.

The small child, he's a seven-year-old kid from a village. So of course, I can't expect him to sit and read a script and understand which stage the scene is at and then expect him the next day to jump to something else. So we had to shoot chronologically. Also, I thought it would do me best weather-wise because snow falls and then melts and then it's sunny and then snow falls again. So I was very certain I wanted to shoot chronologically, but it didn't really turn out that way. We were scheduled to shoot for about 30 days. We ended up shooting for about 35. We did go over.

And of course, I already told you about the 10 day break that happened due to COVID. But I guess there was just some forces working that helped us to finish the film. I don't know how Because you have more time to reflect maybe and develop even more with the break in between? I did have time because I had already shot for two days because I was locked up in my room. I had nothing else to do. So I just went through all the footage like obsessively. you were so excited. I'm sure that amped you up. Because how often do you get to like take a break? Yeah, but I'm also terrified.

I don't think it's a common thing though when you're making a film as far as like shooting a movie and then taking mission, 10 day intermission. Yeah, but I was just terrified that people are going to run away and not come back. For sure. All of my micro budget features have been this cool way of, I don't think I talk about this enough actually. It's really helpful I think for filmmakers that they're trying to make something. So basically I would do pre-production for a week and a half and then I would plan for a three day shoot, three or four day shoot. And we would go film and then I would take the footage, come home and then.

do another two weeks of pre-production and then go shoot another three or four days and so on and so forth until 20 days were shot. And continuity is a dangerous thing when it comes to that method. But you get to like really play with people's schedule. Cause when you don't have any money, you've got to be creative with the time, right? And how you spend it and all that.

That's been very effective kind of approach for me for the micro budget stuff. It's not ideal. I don't want to do it that way. It's like this consistency kind of method where it's obtainable. If you can't afford to pay people, then you can't really afford to have them, at least from my experience, for a month straight. It's really tricky. It becomes tricky. But also it depends on how you set it all up and it depends on what you're trying to do. And also how far you are from where the people stay, right? Because if you're shooting in LA and your crew's in LA, then you can use this method. But if you have to take them, I don't know, to like Mexico.

then you'll have to do that like for two weeks at a stretch. LA too is like so expensive. I don't know many people that can afford to not have income. Money coming in for a whole month. Not saying you won't pay them anything, but it's like you got to be creative with the producing side. Because money and time, like you said, that's a reality. Where like it gets to a point sometimes where you don't even want to make the movie because you don't want to make it incorrectly because you don't have what you think you need. But sometimes you might just need to go, right? Just be creative with your approach.

Because I think you'll never have enough time and enough money. You'll always want more. It's so true, yeah. How did you feel when you wrapped the film? Did you feel like you got everything? I wasn't sure. I hoped I had everything. I was completely exhausted and I saw I'm never going to make another film in my life. This is the last time I'm going to do it. The shoot was extremely stressful for me. While writing and while prepping, I prepped pretty much alone the entire film. And a few winters before, at least two winters before I did it.

winter trips specifically for that. Those were exhausting as well, but those were easier for me because I'm just really used to functioning alone. And then when I had the necessary stress of having a crew and a cast and having to manage a lot of people and a lot of different dynamics and egos that come into play, think that really drained a lot of my energy. But then I learned that directing is perhaps only 50 % of actually sitting and directing the actors and figuring out your lenses and your framing and how to.

go bug scene. The rest of it is pretty much crisis management. Management. It really is. And a lot of times the work isn't hard. It's people problems, right? Just being able to manage people's expectations or needs or whatever. Exactly. So in post, what was it like? You won't probably believe it, but I didn't have an editor. But for a feature film, you obviously want to work with an editor whom you've worked with before or somebody whom you know. But I found this really great editor whom I'd never worked with before.

and she seemed to decode on paper. And I just decided to go with her. And it was a bit of a risk because I didn't know if we'd get along, but we worked pretty well together. So it was quite a long edit process because we put together a rough cut after which I was selected in a residency, which is when I actually came to LA last. This is the global media residency of Film Independent. came there with the rough cut of my film and I got a lot of feedback there. And then I was in New York for like almost two months.

When I came back, then we did a second cut, and then I took another break before we did the third cut. And then there were some tweaks. So the edit was a long process. We started editing in, I think, in June of 2022, and probably like a year overall. With all these breaks. You were very excited probably to get it done, right? But you also wanted to make sure you got it done right.

Yeah, it's a balance and also I couldn't take more than a certain amount of the editor's time. She would give me like this amount of time and then she would have to work on more commercial projects because like you said, people like in cities like Mumbai and LA need to. But that also in a way between cuts gave us that perspective that we needed because otherwise we were just so into the footage. Of course, you do show it to a few trusted people and you get some feedback. You don't show it to everyone. That's a completely wrong approach.

which I learned on Angry Indian Goddesses, by the way, do not show it to everyone. Close circle. A close circle whom you trust. And that's the same for scripts, actually, if you ask me. That's something I've learned the hard way. Yeah, so you show it to your close circle and then you decide whose feedback to take. And of course, then there's a few rounds of experimentation. So that's about the edit. And then for post-production, we didn't have any resources left. So we were very lucky to get two co-producers on board. One of them, Siddharth Neer, he owns Perl.

color grading studio in Bombay called Bridge Post Works, which is one of the best that we have. And he came on board as a co-producer to do the picture finishing, so the color grading and the output. And he has a partner called Naren Chandrabarkar, who's a world-class sound designer, and he has a really beautiful studio. So he came on board and finished the sound. So he has a sound designer called Anirban, who did the sound design for my film. So again, there was working with somebody whom I didn't know, but that turned out really well.

and I'm super happy with the sound of the film. Sound design, gosh, real briefly, like how exciting once you get to that phase, right? How elevated it makes it and how you realize how underappreciated it always is. undervalue of sound. Sound is so undervalued. It's crazy. It's crazy what a difference and I hope you'll see it. I hope you'll hear it when you watch the film because you're going to be watching it at theater. So you premiered at Karlo Vivari. How was that? Yes. God, it was amazing. It was fabulous. Karlo Vivari is...

such a beautiful system. I think it's the right mix. It's very big, but it's not too big. Like it's not as big as Sikha, Venice or Berlin. seems very intimate and the lineup is incredible. Yeah, so it's big enough. It's just it's pure passion for cinema that is driving it and nothing else. And the audience is absolutely exceptional. There are industry people who come and there are filmmakers, but there's also just a passionate audience base that comes.

really have nothing to do with film. just in their professions and their daily lives, they could be like plumbers and office assistants. it. Yeah, and they make this trip every year to come and watch films and really beautiful. It's that kind of society and culture. It's like the culture is the most important thing because without the culture it goes away or it risks going away. Look at how we all grew up here in the 90s. I'm being so cinema parody, so nostalgic right now, but...

In the 90s, where it's like even the everyday person went to the movies every weekend. The culture was there. The society was there. And very much a quick rundown of why, which is probably because they were making better products. also there was just so many ways to watch a film and it was just the community aspect of the video store and whatever, all the things. And there was more curation as well.

which I think was key. Anyways, the point is, when you talk about Carlo Vivare audience, or I think about the other film festivals, Deauville, Locarno, I'm sure Venice, I'm sure Toronto, it's like there's a community there for it, and that's what keeps the wheel turning, I feel like. Because if you make a film and you put all your heart into it and you go screen it for 11 people, yeah, it's not the same thing. Respect and love to the audiences that show up for these films. Yeah.

And I wasn't expecting it, but we got like a really long applause which continued throughout the end credits. I know because I've worked painstakingly on those end credits, so it's more than three minutes. And then we got a standing ovation once the lights came on and people were crying. There were two women who were crying and looking at me. Wow. They can't really communicate really well in English. You made people cry? Yeah. Dang, they should give an award for that. Is that happening? Good. Good job. You succeeded. I'm so excited to see this movie.

Let me just add, before AFI, we are playing at Busan, at Busan International Film Festival. And I'm really excited for Busan because of South Korea, it's Busan cinema-obsessed country. And I'm so excited to see how an Eastern audience will respond to the film as well. There are a couple of festivals that are happening. There's one in Hamburg. There's an Australian premiere, which I can't make it for, that's in Adelaide. And then there's AFI, which I'm really excited about. You're like really excited?

Look, AFI is like the biggest festival in LA. LA is strange because we had the Los Angeles Film Festival, which Film Independent ran, I believe, and then it went away five years ago. But I feel like the biggest festival And now they just have the Spirit Awards. don't think they That's right. And then you've got Dances with Films, which is for lower micro-budget, no stars attached, entertainment-ish, whatever, great festival for certain folks. But I feel like Santa Barbara is like probably the biggest LA area festival.

So I think that's the difference because it's show business. It's not craft driven. It's film. Yeah, it's what I face when I in Bombay is also film is perceived as an industry, not as an art. So I think that's probably the case in LA as well. That's it. But however, there's enough of an audience in LA to appreciate the film. It's also one of my favorite cities in the world. So I'm very excited. If I had to answer quickly, the biggest festival in Los Angeles would be AFI at this point.

and Tribeca and then you have South by Southwest and I would say New York Film Festival seems of course Sundance. I so appreciate New York for holding it down, craft side in America. I feel like they definitely put that front. It's frustrating man. I'm not trying to be a nose up snobby film person, but it's our culture is fast food almost. It's the same in India. I'm like tracking my brains about what is the most prestigious film festival.

because we have yet to do our Indian premiere, which for me is going to be very exciting. Do you have that locked in or you don't? Not as yet, but I'm very hopeful. Any past favorite films in general and or films that really inspired you when you were making Second Chance? There are so many favorite films. When it comes to Second Chance, I think there have been two very distinct inspirations in the style of telling the story and making the film.

And they're both pretty different, so this might throw you off. So I'm really inspired by the Iranian New Wave, the poetic, neorealistic cinema of Iran. When I watched those films for the first time in my life, I was pretty old by then, I was in college and I watched world cinema for the first time when I was in film club. But it really opened my eyes and they do break your heart open in a way and they have this approach that I have used of using non-actors.

being neurodistic, open air shooting, natural lighting, a very documentary approach. But they're also pretty poetic in the way that they don't really hide the darkness and vice versa. They have a lot of open endings, finite in so to say. so I think I'm really inspired by Iranian cinema. In particular, I would say the films of Abbas Kyrostami and Majid Majidi. And the other inspiration is there are a lot of great female filmmakers right now.

to look up to, but one whom I really look up to in the way that she tells the story of a young female protagonist coming of age is Andrea Arnold's. she keeps popping up. Yeah, she's incredible. I don't think she's given... Red Road? Of course, Red Road and Fish Tank and American Honey, think. she did Fish Tank. I didn't know that. Fish Tank. OK, that was my introduction to Andrea Arnold. I didn't know it years ago. OK.

What a film, right? Andrea Arnold's the real deal. And like, it's funny because she's not like a household name, at least not here. Yeah, like I'm saying, I think she needs to be given more credit because nobody does it like her. The young woman coming of age and they're all pretty great characters. They don't do the right thing, but you still really empathize with them. And yeah, it's just she's done think she's sneaky good with genre storytelling, but she knows how to move the story. I feel like the story just moves. yeah. She just grabs you in. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So is there an Iranian film? The Iranian films that I really like, particularly the ones by Majid Majidi like Children of Heaven and The Color of Paradise and Abbas Kyrgyzstan means Where is the Friend's Home? These are probably a few. Okay, last question. Any filmmaking advice that you would give your younger self? I think I would tell my younger self to not be in such a hurry to make a film because you need to live enough of your life to be able to

bring that storyteller alive in you. Otherwise you just couldn't make any film. But if you want to make a good film, a film that makes an impact and a film that only you can tell, you have to be able to live a certain amount of life and have a certain amount of experiences. yeah, just open your eyes and look up and look around because there's inspiration everywhere. And I particularly say this to a lot of younger people that don't look at your phone so much. Just look around you more.

Like when you're traveling in a train or when you're taking a metro or you're in a bus, just listen and look at things around you. Because that's where you learn about characters. That's where you learn about stories. And that's what makes great filmmaking, right? Hell of a soundbite. Please like and subscribe to this podcast and follow us on social media at past present future.

and let us know in the comments section what movies you're watching. Thank you so much for listening to the Past Present Feature podcast and we'll see you next time. Peace.