In filmmaker Achal Mishra’s 50-minute film Dhuin, we meet an artist from the fringes who struggled for years to realise his dream. The story essentially is about the eccentricity of youth and how rare it is for dreams to stand a chance.
Set in Darbhanga, Bihar, the bilingual—it is both in Maithli and Hindi language—film brings to the fore, the softer side of a town that has often been showcased in cinema as a space for rogue elements. Emotive visuals, authentic characters, and a free-flowing narrative gives this film—it was recently screened at the 75th Cannes Film Festival 2022, in France—a poetic touch. In this interview, the Darbhanga-born filmmaker tells us about the process of working on Dhuin and the themes that this film explores.
How did you come up with the idea for Dhuin?
We were doing some local promotions for Gamak Ghar [Mishra’s first film]. During one of those days, Prashant Rana [actor in Gamak Ghar and Dhuin] came to me and said that he won’t be able to come the next day because he had to take his father for a job interview. Prashant had recently started watching world cinema and was planning to move to Mumbai. He had watched a few films that sort of stayed with him. I told him that he should write something about what he is feeling.
Then I left Darbhanga, and came to Mumbai. But the image of a father and son travelling on a winter morning stayed with me. I thought, let’s go back and see what we can do. In 10 days, I wrote a five-page script and we started shooting.
You started with a five-page script! What was the process like?
Those five pages have everything in terms of the scene. The crew was so small that we didn’t find a need to elaborate so much on paper. We were changing it on the go. The shoot was not really how a film is shot traditionally. Because we did not rent anything, there was no expense as such. We were free to make mistakes and try again. There was a lot of trial and error happening. Our shoot was in constant interaction with the reality of the space. Whatever is happening in the film was literally happening around us, so we picked from there and then incorporated that in the film.
Dhuin explores many themes. For you, what is the core idea?
We understand the film in retrospect based on how we have made it. For me, Dhuin began simply as a father-son story. In the process, we realised that there is more to it.
When I was making Gamak Ghar, I was mostly around these people who were doing theatre. There’s a scene [in Dhuin] where Pankaj [the protagonist played by Abhinav Jha] is sitting with all these filmmakers from Mumbai; I have been one of those people. We were also not sure of the film that we were making while we were making. A lot of things came together…a lot of things were changed in the edit.
You made this film with non-actors. Does that add a sense of authenticity?
For sure! More than Dhuin, it worked in Gamak Ghar. With Dhuin, the individuals were actually actors and they were playing actors in the film. So, it is different from Gamak Ghar. There’s a scene with the three filmmakers and Pankaj; it was not scripted at all. I knew they understood the craft. That is why we kept shooting that scene for three days. We sat every evening and let them have a free-flowing conversation. Whatever that film has become now, none of that is scripted. I had just decided on the graph of where the scene might go. They kept having conversations over three days. When I finally sat down to edit, I pieced those bits together.