It was as much a comeback as a win for Rohan Kanawade at Sundance this year. The festival that rejected the screenplay of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) four years ago crowned the Marathi queer drama World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in 2025, a first and a major milestone for Indian cinema. After a months-long run in festival circuits, the film is out in theatres.
Part autobiographical, part fiction, Sabar Bonda tells a tender love story between two young men in a village in Maharashtra. Beyond the lens of queerness, it explores grief, expectations, and the friendship between the city-bred Anand (Bhushan Manoj), who returns to his village to mourn the loss of his father, and Ballya (Suraj Sumaan), a farmer and Anand’s long-lost school friend. Through mourning and loss, the two reconnect, and their friendship transforms into something deeper.
The spark, Kanawade says, came after his own father’s death. “I longed for friendship because I was grieving. When I suggested the idea to people, they were appalled—can death really be the background for a love story? But the thought of a film that begins with loss and blossoms into something more really appealed to me,” he says. “I was reimagining my own claustrophobic experience, but through this film, I wanted to make a tender journey for the central character by injecting love into his life.”
Even though Sabar Bonda is a gay love story, queer identity was never the core of Kanawade’s treatment. “I didn’t want this to be a ‘different’ love story. I just wanted to show two human beings falling in love. That emotion is the same in every human. The problem arises when films focus only on sexuality and treat it differently. I wanted to normalise affection.”
The everydayness of life, and how people navigate it, is what inspired Kanawade. “The film talks about characters and how mundane their lives are. Although I was confident that the film would work, many producers rejected it,” Kanawade says.
He adds that producers and decision-makers are often averse to risk. “They reject anything different because it doesn’t fit their idea of what will work. Many of them don’t have imagination. That’s why they never back independent films or first-time directors. Producers need to be equally aware of the craft of filmmaking.”
Getting the film made was an uphill task. So much so that it took three years to find the cast for the film. “Many actors didn’t even turn up for auditions once they realised it was a love story between two men. They were so wary of being labelled, of being perceived as queer,” he says. The film’s all-India theatrical release is distributed by Rana Daggubati.
As Indian independent cinema finds its global moment, Kanawade is glad to be away from the mainstream. “As an independent filmmaker, no one dictates what you should say or how you should say it. You’re free to explore. I had a specific vision: no background music, static camera work. A studio would never have let me do it.”
With one global breakthrough behind him, Kanawade says another story is already taking shape. But first, he would like to take a short break. Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda proves that sometimes the prickliest stories bloom into the sweetest breakthroughs—reminding us that love, loss, and a little bit of stubborn independence can shake up the whole film world.