Independent vs Commercial Cinema Is An Outdated Narrative

Coming back almost a decade after his National Award-winning debut film, Tithi, director Raam Reddy feels that his sophomore feature, Jugnuma, is more personal. It tells the story of an orchard owner living with his family in the Himalayas in the 1980s.

- SHREYAS PANDE

While recounting a tender, intimate, and nostalgic tale, the film adds a touch of magical realism.

A scene in the trailer shows a man with wings jumping off a cliff and flying in the sky. "I wanted to tell a suspenseful, mysterious story with magical elements," says Raam, adding that it bothered him to see magical realism as a thriving genre in just literature.

"People sit in a room and write what they want. Whereas in cinema, it is a bit more complicated as you have to convince an ecosystem to believe in a particular dream. I wanted to fight for that dream, and that's why I took this leap," he says.

Due to its experimental nature, Raam wanted to give maximum clarity to his team about the film. So, he worked with animator and storyboard artist Upmanyu Bhattacharya to turn the entire script into a 378-page graphic novel. "We used that as our bible on set. It gave me a lot of clarity on how I want the film to come to life," says Raam.

He explains that adding a magical touch to the film involved a lot of technical precision, location scouting, and working with VFX. "The film has over 600 VFX shots, but no one will be able to spot anything. It was meant to create a world of fantasy, but at the same time, you should not feel it as the story is also set in a realistic world," he says.