Rohan Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) shall be out in Indian cinemas after a months-long run within the worldwide movie competition circuit. Sabar Bonda was premiered in January on the Sundance Film Festival, the place it gained the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic award. The Marathi film shall be launched on September 19 by Rana Daggubati’s firm Spirit Media.
Kanawade’s characteristic debut is a homosexual romance set in rural Maharashtra. Following his father’s demise, Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) accompanies his mom (Jayshri Jagtap) to his ancestral village to watch the normal mourning interval. Anand’s liaison along with his neighbour Balya (Suraaj Suman) unfolds discreetly, underneath the noses of members of the family.
Sabar Bonda is a rigorously constructed chronicle of a love as taboo as it’s thrilling. Kanawade and cinematographer Vikas Urs use the 1.66:1 side ratio all through to depict the rising bodily and emotional bond between the lads. In a earlier interview, Kanawade had stated, “I instructed Vikas that the movie wanted to look ultra-simplistic and actual – like life unfolding in entrance of the digicam.”
Vikas Urs’s credit embrace Natesh Hegde’s Pedro (2021) and Vagachipani (2025), Jaishankar Aryar’s Shivamma (2022) and Abhijit Mazumdar’s Body (2024). A Film and Television Institute of India alum, Urs was deeply drawn to the autobiographical parts in Sabar Bonda – the movie is impressed by the director’s personal expertise of his father’s demise.
In an interview, 40-year-old Urs spoke to Scroll about shaping Sabar Bonda’s themes and emotional influence by way of his cinematography. Here are edited excerpts from the dialog.
Going into the Sabar Bonda shoot, what had been your early ideas?
When Rohan despatched me the script, the very first thing that excited me was that it reveals him. I had not learn a script or seen a movie within the current previous the place this had occurred.
Usually, filmmakers wish to disguise behind their movies – both by way of the craft or the very concept. With Rohan, I noticed plenty of transparency. Nobody may have made this movie other than him.
Rohan had spent plenty of time evolving the script. He had spent shut to 5 years creating the movie. Because it was additionally his first movie, his concepts wanted to be translated – the motion from the written kind or the creativeness to a cinematic kind, an optical picture.
Was the 1.66:1 side ratio determined on the outset itself? What are your ideas on this methodology of framing a story?
I used to be skilled on [celluloid] movie. I had shot Natesh’s Vagachipani on 16mm celluloid within the 1.66 side ratio earlier than Sabar Bonda.
1.66 was the usual widescreen side ratio used in the course of the New Wave that began within the Sixties in Europe. The New Wave actions throughout Europe rejected each the two.39:1 of the American widescreen and 1.33, which turned a tv format. The New Wave movies had been largely low price range and sometimes shot on 16mm, in order that they sort of arrived at 1.66 as their side ratio.
Sabar Bonda was shot in the identical side ratio, however on digital. In immediately’s digital projection, you wouldn’t discover a lot of a distinction between 1.66 and 1.85, however you will note a big distinction between a 1.66 and a 2.39.
The 2.39 covers your complete display. In 1.66, a way more restricted display space is roofed.
In phrases of composition, 1.66 is sort of a halfway level between panorama and character. Both have to be balanced. Your imagery has to convey data and emotion utilizing each house and character in a balanced kind, in a method that doesn’t expend an excessive amount of of the display house, but in addition doesn’t restrict that display house to solely the actor.
So, you are attempting to reach at a candy spot between house, which can also be crucial character in Sabar Bonda, other than the actors. That is the great thing about 1:66, in that sense.
Much of the love story takes place within the extensive open. Indoors, against this, Anand and Balya are restrained by the forbidden nature of their relationship.
The sort of world by which the movie was alleged to happen was intimate, but had vastness. The feeling of Anand and Balya being collectively needed to be about me being intimate with them of their good, unhealthy and ugly moments. But I additionally wanted to be a sure distance from them within the outdoors world.
When Anand and Balya are outdoors, they’re extra free. That’s when the house turns into rather more open to them, it’s extra receiving of them. When they’re inside, there’s a sure sense of claustrophobia, of being inward and trapped.
Essentially, the movie is coping with the play between proximity and distance. You’re attempting to be near them, however not too shut. You’re additionally attempting to be removed from them at occasions, however not too far. It’s the suitable distance, and proper distance is relative.
With all of the movies that I’ve shot, I’m all the time attempting to determine that proper distance. It modifications every time. With each movie, with each world, with each emotion that you just’re attempting to open up, that concept of the suitable distance will preserve altering, and it should. Otherwise, it is going to be a really static negotiation, it gained’t permit any evocation to emerge.
Across the movie, there’s an uncommon division of the face into its numerous areas, which creates a special sort of intimate feeling.
We wished to make use of the human face in itself, to take a look at it in a barely awkward method. The very first shot is of Anand dozing off. We mustn’t have a look at Anand at his eye stage. The concept of that second itself, the strangeness of placing the viewers proper there at the start, after which slicing to a really actual second of seeing him and his mom in a ready room within the hospital – the distinction needed to be felt. This meant arriving on the proper peak at which we see our characters and their areas.
I don’t do any references in any respect. I largely reply to the areas that I go to and the folks that I meet. I’ve shot in numerous villages in India. Pedro was in Uttara Kannada. Shivamma was in a really barren a part of Karnataka. Rohan’s movie is ready in Sangamner.
It’s about letting us stay in that house. My pursuit is to create pictures with out having the gaze of an outsider. I wouldn’t say that I handle to do that each time, however the pursuit is all the time to be the insider. In a method, this movie’s imagery is about being the insider that Rohan is.
What is the emotional panorama that Sabar Bonda is traversing? In his interview with Scroll, Rohan Kanawade defined the movie’s use of stillness by saying that he wished to evoke the standard of a photograph album.
The start line for Rohan is revisiting a reminiscence. We wished the digicam eye to be as nonetheless as doable and create a sense of motion inside that stillness.
The entry level for the story is grieving. Coming to phrases with grief is a troublesome course of to navigate. We didn’t wish to disturb the method an excessive amount of by creating drama round it, which Rohan had anyway not put into the writing.
Why did we have to transfer the digicam in any respect? If we needed to, may it transfer due to a personality’s motivation, which is the classical method of seeing it? That wouldn’t serve this movie’s function.
Anand is in every single place, internally. The entire drive was to make us really feel the movie internally, not externally. The exteriority was used to create an inside stirring or an inside journey.
One of the pivotal scenes incorporates male nudity, which has been excised from the Indian theatrical minimize. Was this difficult to shoot?
The entire movie was difficult to shoot as a result of we needed to obtain sure technical parameters inside a low price range and with largely non-professional actors. The strategy of mounting the movie concerned various negotiations.
This explicit scene was troublesome for Bhushaan and Suraaj, by way of their consolation as actors. The total scene is taking us to the purpose the place it’s liberating for the characters, and never simply as a sexual act. It’s liberating additionally for his or her internal turmoil to come back collectively.
There can also be a delicate dream-like high quality to sure occasions within the movie.
That was just about the state one was making an attempt by way of the movie’s expertise – the reminiscence location. Otherwise, viewers will simply see this as a narrative, reasonably than take part within the build up of evocation. The compositions too aren’t about creating fairly footage. If they don’t have an effect on you, even fairly footage stop to be fairly after some extent.
What sort of color gradation did Sabar Bonda bear?
My method of working largely is that I repair plenty of my decisions on location. I don’t like to govern imagery an excessive amount of. Thankfully, these sort of movies permit for little or no manipulation.
[Chief colourist] Sidharth Meer, one of many movie’s producers, understood the place we had been coming from. He had been with the script for a really very long time. He negotiated with the internal assemble that we had been attempting to open up for ourselves – like why the interiority can occur provided that the photographs should not exterior. If the color grading course of begins turning into exterior, then the interiority is completely killed.
We had been all responding to the color grading as an act of subtraction reasonably than addition. Even in the course of the capturing, I used to be attempting to maintain it as less-is-more as doable.
The course of was about being economical within the development, however not purely economical within the expertise. Which is why the shot-taking and length are expansive. That sense of timelessness can solely occur if you’ll be able to arrive at a picture that’s not self-contained.
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In Marathi movie ‘Sabar Bonda’, the forbidden fruit of homosexual love
