Replete with desolate characters and disturbing scenes, independent filmmaker Ritesh Sharma’s debut feature Jhini Bini Chadariya (The Brittle Thread) turns the spotlight on a different side of Varanasi (or Banaras) – something that never features on coffee table books or travel documentaries. Nonetheless, after premiering at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2021 and then opening on home turf at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) in 2022, the movie quickly became a festival favourite. So much so that it even won the ‘Best Debut Feature Film’ award at the New York Indian Film Festival.
Inspired by Banaras’ popular local proverb, ‘Raand, Saand, Seedhi, Sanyasi… Inse bache toh seve Kashi’ (which roughly translates to ‘whore, bull, ladder, monk… if you survive these, save Kashi’), the plot primarily follows the separate journeys of a traditional saree weaver, Shahdab (Muzaffar Khan), and an orchestra dancer, Rani (Megha Mathur), who are battling the demons both within and in the real world. Equipped with an evocative and unsettling storyline, the film explores (rather exposes!) the stark socio-political realities of the Hindi belt, particularly Uttar Pradesh (UP). Anjo John has composed the film’s background music, while Priyashanker Ghosh has done its cinematography and editing is done by Bhisma Pratim.
Now streaming on MovieSaints, Jhini Bini Chadariya is presented by Anurag Kashyap. In an exclusive conversation with The Movie Mail, writer-director Ritesh – who is also known for The Holy Wives (2010), Rainbows Are Real (2014), Khalish (2015) and Laal Maati (2018) – spoke at length about how he developed the plot and its characters, the challenges of releasing an independent film on OTT, his upcoming movie Kavita, and more. Excerpts:
Watch the trailer of Jhini Bini Chadariya here:
Q. Given the country’s current political scenario, this movie does touch a raw nerve. Did it ever worry you that the film might land you in trouble or that you may face challenges taking it to a larger audience?
A. Before Jhini Bini Chadariya, I was working on documentaries and short films and, in a way, making myself ready for fiction. But whatever be the format, I always need a reason to tell a story. After 2014, a lot of things were changing in the country, and they did leave an impact on me. To be precise, it was quite disturbing to see what was happening around us. That ignited an urge in me to tell a story, and I wanted to use longform to narrate it. I started writing Jhini Bini Chadariya some time in 2015. It began with the journey of a handful of characters. Coming from a theatre background, I have always worked with actors and characters. Even while making documentaries, I always did my research before shooting. Typically, I take about six months trying to understand the place and its people, before I begin filming. The same happened with this movie too.
In 2016, I got my lead characters – Rani and Shahdab. Earlier, I had made a film on the devadasi system (The Holy Wives). So, somehow I always had this understanding of women who go through a lot, but still remain very strong. And that’s how the character of Rani came about. Meanwhile, as I started spending more time in Varanasi, the character of Shahdab took shape. That said, I didn’t want to retell a regular story about the city – revolving around its pandits, ghats and sari weavers – nor was there any intention to make a political film. Everything in the story developed organically as I continued writing. Thus, whatever changes we were witnessing in our surroundings gradually seeped into the narrative. Around the same time, I also met a few foreign travellers; people who saw India from a different perspective. That gave me a new character – Adah (Sivan Spector). Those days, I also remember reading quite a bit about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then, I met a few people from Israel and it made me realise that a traveller’s perspective can be very different from the common notion in their country. Despite being from the same nation, they can be a completely different person.
By then, a lot of sounds had started coming in from different directions and suddenly everything around was turning Bhagwa. I was born in Mughalsarai, where I had spent most of my childhood days. All at once, the place was renamed to Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Nagar. Every single thing started evoking me and making me really emotional. Eventually, all the things that I witnessed and felt started becoming a part of the drafts of the screenplay. I was not trying to consciously or deliberately make a political film or prove a point. I was just telling the story of the two primary characters – the people they meet and the life they lead. Shahdab is a weaver, but it’s not a documentary about his craft. Rather, I wanted to tell the story of the person he is – about his fears, apprehensions and the challenges he faces every day. This came together after meeting and listening to the views of different Muslims in Varanasi. Most of them expressed a sense of constant fear and uncertainty. They have always been a part of this country, but everything has changed over the past few years. Of course, the dwindling art of handloom weaving is a problem, but they were also dealing with a different kind of anxiety. In fact, I felt the same disquiet in the atmosphere. So, that fear became my focal point.
Later on, during the post-production stage, the script was kind of rewritten again, and the sounds became a layering in the story. Around the same time, I was also participating in the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) movement. Seeing the protests and witnessing the attack on Jamia Millia Islamia University was very disturbing. I had to vent my emotions somewhere. Thus, the impact of all these experiences was organically influencing the plot of Jhini Bini Chadariya.
While I was making this film, I was just being true to myself. Because if I can’t be true to my story and characters, why am I making this film at all? I was doing it because I was not comfortable with whatever was happening with my family, friends, neighbours and what was unfolding in those WhatsApp groups. It made me tell the story without worrying or thinking about what would happen to me if I make this film. I am still quite new to filmmaking. Jhini Bini Chadariya is my debut feature. I was not thinking much about how the film will be released in the theatres or how I’ll deal with those challenges. For me, it was more like once you make the film, it’s the power of cinema that gets recorded. I wanted to capture the space around the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, the people who live there and their feelings. I wanted to record the change that’s been happening in the theatres – like when they play the National Anthem and expect you to stand up. All these small yet significant changes inevitably made an impression on the story and its characters.
Also read: Jhini Bini Chadariya review: weaving through India’s political pandemonium
Q. You mentioned earlier that you wanted to make a love story, but Jhini Bini Chadariya seems more like a tale of despair, fragility and fading identities. How deeply have these characters affected you personally?
A. For Rani’s character, I had spent three-four months with orchestra dancers, just to understand their body language and get an idea of what’s actually happening in their lives. Believe it or not, they have challenged me as a filmmaker at every step. That was mainly because I was trying to document a specific craft that the story was asking for, and it wasn’t easy to do that. A lot was happening in that space, and I had to choose which bits I wanted to highlight in my film. While shooting, I was getting affected by their circumstances quite inadvertently. It’s only when you step into their shoes that you realise how privileged you are. They know what they are going through and what it entails, yet they find a way to deal with it. There’s a huge amount of learning there. In Varanasi, there’s a famous saying that goes, ‘Raand, Saand, Seedhi, Sanyasi… Inse bache toh seve Kashi’. How Bollywood projects prostitution is very different from what I saw unfolding in that space. But here too, it’s about women’s agency, owning up her body, and the fact that there’s no shame in being a sex worker.
What I find most interesting about Rani’s character is that her goal is to send her daughter to school and take care of her. When it comes to motherhood, they go off on a tangent. They don’t want the next generation to go into this line of work. So, that again became my other focal point – how important it is for them to give their children a better life. It shows the fragility of the characters. Jhini Bini Chadariya is a love story. But it’s like we are ignoring the characters of this love story. We may have watched the character of Rani dancing to some Bhojpuri song on YouTube and skipped it. Or may have walked past someone like her while strolling through India Gate in Delhi. But never bothered to find out what they may have gone through or what compelled them to become an orchestra dancer. So yes, while these characters were lending a lot to my film, they have made a deep impact on me as an individual. The same has happened to me in the past too. When I go for research, I get a lot of inspiration. However, in turn, there’s some change that starts appearing in me too. Amid all this, I also had to decide on what exactly I wanted to highlight in the film, otherwise the narrative would just take any direction. I wanted the realism of the situation that I was experiencing emotionally to have an impact on the audience. So, whatever was affecting me, I used it as a craft to recreate that effect on screen.
The same thing happened in the case of Shahdab too. I met a lot of people from the Muslim community in Varanasi; sat down and had chai with them. They spoke a bit, but then they were also aware that nothing constructive will come out of such conversations… ‘kuch hoga nahi’.
There’s another very interesting thing that I realised while writing my first fiction… That it’s all you somewhere. All the masks that you wear or the inner roles that you play somehow find exposure through the characters that you write. Eventually, the lines between fiction and reality get blurred and a new story is created. I travel a lot before penning a script and often find the experience of documenting the small details about different people and lives quite amazing.
So yes, all those characters have affected me in some way or the other. And then, I tried to weave in all that until the film reached the editing desk. It’s not about going back or finding a solution. But somehow, I did want the story to be a little haunting, as if at a loss wondering what was happening around. Because, that’s the same space I find myself in. I don’t know if I can make a difference. So, I am just presenting the characters, narrating about their life and the place they live. That’s the space we all are in today.
Q. Of course OTT has revolutionised the landscape of storytelling, but it has its shortcomings too. You too have struggled to get your film released on a digital platform. What’s your take on the online streaming space?
A. It’s an amazing time for filmmakers right now, thanks to OTT. You can just make a film and try to get it released on an online platform. Earlier, it used to be very difficult releasing a movie in the theatres or even finding distributors. More so for independent filmmakers, because they are, in fact, the more dependent ones. It’s a long journey that you embark on and you don’t know where it’s going to end. Films have also been removed from OTT platforms. We saw Dibakar Banerjee’s Tees being shelved by Netflix. [The film – starring Naseeruddin Shah and Manisha Koirala – recently premiered at the Dharamshala International Film Festival in Himachal Pradesh]. Meanwhile, Nayanthara’s Annapoorani: The Goddess of Food was also removed by the OTT giant. Then, there was also a controversy around the Ali Abbas Zafar-directed Amazon Prime Video series Tandav [starring Saif Ali Khan, Sunil Grover, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Dimple Kapadia and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub]. At the same time, we are seeing a sudden influx of movies based on the Ramayana, where Lord Ram is the hero. That’s sort of becoming the new definition of deshbhakti.
OTT has now become more of a corporate space, and my situation is similar to that of Abhimanyu. I made a film alright, but I didn’t know how to break into the chakravyuha of releasing it on the right platform. I cannot go to the censor board, because obviously, they are going to ask for multiple cuts. Clipping the kissing scenes is fine, but I didn’t want to remove important parts of the film. On the other hand, OTT platforms also have similar regulations, where they expect you to show things only in a specific style. Apparently, MUBI is better, but things are still not that simple.
One has to understand that independent filmmakers are also very vulnerable creators. They run on a low budget, and usually struggle to get producers for their films. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that everything depends on the director of the movie. The only motivation is that you love cinema and decided to make a film, so you keep marching ahead despite all odds. In essence, independent filmmakers are facing a huge distribution gap at this point. In fact, there’s no OTT for us. There are platforms that pretend to be sympathetic toward us, but the money they offer would probably be equivalent to that of a day’s shoot. So, after a while when you are not earning anything, the enthusiasm to be a storyteller also subsides.
The term ‘indie cinema’ has become quite the fad lately. These days, even a five-crore movie is called independent cinema. It’s actually not. Independent films are those that come from a more earthy space. I think South India has a good market for independent films, mostly because it’s a collaborative space. People need to come together to make good films – be it the producer, distributor or director. When OTT was emerging, it did give the impression of a new wave of cinema. But right now, it’s full of maar-dhaar films. Meanwhile, the theatre-going culture is already vanishing. Even if an indie film is released in the cinemas, it’s only people who can buy popcorn worth ₹500 are watching these movies. And now that we have destroyed most of the single-screen theatres, those for whom the movies are made do not actually get to watch them. My grandmother cried while watching Jhini Bini Chadariya. She had probably seen Dev Anand films during her time and a few others later, but she could still connect with this story too.
Many in the Indian Film Festival of Bhubaneswar turned numb after watching the movie. But the thing with indie filmmakers is that we take our movies to different festivals, pat each other’s back and come back. There are no distributors at these venues. Additionally, there’s a submission fee at film festivals, which sometimes becomes a little hard to afford as not all events take care of your travel and stay. Of course, you meet different people and make a network, maybe fill out forms to send your movie to Europe and other places. If you’re fortunate, you might even secure some funding. But these are very far-fetched ideas. It’s like a maze that we need to unravel.
Yes, the landscape of cinema is changing. The audience wants to watch movies that bring out stories from different regions – such as Malayalam and Odia films. People are putting in money and taking risks even with non-actors to make these films. That said, this trend is completely missing in the Hindi belt. Here, they still want to work with big actors and directors only. So, what we (independent filmmakers) need to do is to come together. We also need good producers and distributors, who are equally passionate about taking these films to the right audience. We must break the corporate world mafia somehow. Now, let’s see when that happens. We’ll continue working on our films.
Q. In terms of story, the style of making and inclusivity, can India’s independent cinema be considered global now?
A. I think the diversity in terms of story and characters has always been there. But earlier, I believe, the support for ‘art film’ or ‘parallel cinema’ was more. The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) Film Bazaar also used to provide money for making documentaries and arthouse movies. Before digitalisation, films were made on rolls, and it was impossible to make such movies without funding. But there was a space for art in India, and these films somewhat reflected the country’s political system as well as the nation’s thinking patterns. It’s not that films are not made in countries where art is regulated. Iranian cinema is still revered globally, although artists and filmmakers in the country are often imprisoned or put under house arrest for allegedly ‘making propaganda against the system’. In fact, more people are making films amid all the chaos and restrictions in their respective nations. That kind of trend in filmmaking is slowly catching on in India.
Many people call it ‘brave cinema’, but it’s not that such films have not been made earlier. If we are unable to freely express ourselves through art, it means that somehow there’s a lot of fear within us to speak our minds. To be honest, Jhini Bini Chadariya is not ‘brave cinema’ per se. I would have said a lot more. But given my craft, this is what I felt worked best for the narrative. There have been quite a few films in the recent past – for instance, [Prabhash Chandra-directed] I’m Not the River Jhelum and [Natesh Hegde’s] Pedro – which probably can be termed valiant. That said, there are also directors who feel discouraged half way through and drift away. You are making a film for people to watch and if it doesn’t reach the right kind of audience, one is bound to feel demotivated. We are filmmakers, but ensuring its proper distribution is another task altogether.
Yes, there is emerging global recognition for India’s independent cinema. Even with meagre support, Indian filmmakers are willing to experiment with a variety of stories and narrative techniques. I don’t want to become David Lynch or any other globally recognised director. I want to excel as myself, at my craft. India is a land of diverse cultures and languages. Who else would narrate stories better than us? But somehow we have always tried to ‘oversell’ Bollywood films, even when it comes to the Oscars. “Hamein har cheez chamkili hi dikhani hai.” There are people who have never known movies in India beyond Bollywood. Not that I am not a fan of it. I too have grown up watching such films; have been stunned by Amitabh Bachchan’s dialogue delivery. But there are so many other filmmakers in the country, who would have probably written a great script but couldn’t take it forward from there, or would have made a good film but couldn’t release it optimally. Remember Kamal Swaroop? He had made a brilliant postmodernist film, called Om-Dar-B-Dar (1988), following which he wrote a few more stories, but those never saw the light of the day. Now, I understand the reason he couldn’t make those films. We have the potential to make films that can very well be termed as global cinema, but again distribution of films is a concern.
Q. Anurag Kashyap has been very vocal about Jhini Bini Chadariya. How much does it matter for filmmakers such as yourself?
A. A lot! I wish there were more people like Anurag Kashyap. He was unwell when he first saw Jhini Bini Chadariya at the Dharamshala International Film Festival. Despite that, he came over and gave me a hug after watching the film. And that day onwards, he has often spoken about the film and helped in promoting it on social media. Later on, when the movie was about to be released on MovieSaints, Anurag came forward to present it. MovieSaints is a relatively new OTT platform, so a celebrated filmmaker presenting our film meant a lot for us. In the past, he has done it for a few other movies as well. It’s a crucial support for independent filmmakers like us. I believe other acclaimed filmmakers/actors should learn from him to lend a hand to emerging directors. It’s not always about financial support. You can back a film just by speaking about it. That way, you are not just promoting an individual but encouraging good cinema. In the day and age of social media, even a simple Instagram post can make a huge difference. Similarly, Dibakar Banerjee has been very supportive. He’s not on social media, but he has spoken about Jhini Bini Chadariya and I am grateful to him for that.
Q. Tell us about your next project..
A. My next film is a story from Bihar. Again, like Jhini Bini Chadariya, I am trying to look at Bihar and its people through a different lens. Just like Banaras, we always tend to visualise and understand Bihar in a limited perspective – it’s either poverty or filthy locales. But it’s also a place of brilliant art forms. In fact, my grandfather is an artiste from Bihar, and I have been very curious about their folk art. How the state’s politics and its people influence these creative mediums is something that has always intrigued me.
Similar to that in UP, there’s a specific nautanki shaili in Bihar – a folk theatre form, called Bidesia, the origin of which is often attributed to Bhikhari Thakur. [Commonly referred to as the ‘Shakespeare of Bhojpuri’, he was a 20th century poet, playwright, lyricist, singer and social activist]. This form of nautanki is also known for its cross-gender casting, where male actors are often seen portraying a character of the opposite sex.
However, the focus of my upcoming film – titled Kavita – is more on the artistes who practise this theatre form as well as the village they come from. Of course, the art form is important, but here the subplots precede that. It’s a very different narrative from Jhini Bini Chadariya. I have worked with a lot of non-actors on this project. Currently, I am looking for the right kind of producers and distributors to release the movie, keeping in mind all the learnings from my previous film. In the meantime, I would also try to have it stream on a platform where more people can watch and enjoy the movie.
