
After a good show last year, the film festival calendar has opened well for India again in 2025 with Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) having had its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic section of the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it won the Grand Jury award.
The film is a gentle, tender exploration of a friendship forged in the middle of distress. Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) along with his mother (Jayshri Jagtap), is compelled to spend a 10-day mourning period for his late father in their ancestral village where he is unable to relate to people at large, more so because of their intrusive queries about his marriage plans.
He finds a kindred spirit in childhood friend Balya (Suraaj Suman), who is battling similar marital expectations in the community. Kanawade’s debut feature is a semi-autobiographical story and a rare cinematic exploration of queerness in rural India and among the underprivileged. In this exclusive interview with CE, Rohan speaks about his passion for cinema and the making of Sabar Bonda.
Excerpts:
Let’s start with the title, Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears). What made you pick it up? Was it part of your childhood memories or as a metaphor for the prickly sweetness of life?
It’s exactly what you have said. The fruit might be thorny from the outside but is very sweet inside. It’s very nutritious. I wanted to use that in the film. My two protagonists—Anand and Balya—are going through a difficult time in their lives. Everyone is pressuring them. Anand has lost his father. But, even in this time of duress, they stay true to their identity. They manage to find cherished moments, moments of sweetness. I also wanted a Marathi title for the film.
How did you get into cinema?
For me, cinema started with gadgets. I think I was about four years old when I asked my dad if the theatre was a big TV. He said it’s a screen and then he explained the projector to me. I was so fascinated by it, a gadget that made everything look so big. So, the projector was my first love. I made my first slide projector in the sixth standard. I used to go to the theatre just to go into the projection room.
I started making my first film on a mobile camera in 2007. We couldn’t finish it because no one had the technical expertise. We were just exploring. But that process was so interesting that I felt like making one more and I wanted to finish that one. So, I made another film using my friend’s mobile phone and I used my parents in that film.
How did the family react?
It was my father who supported me. He told me that if I was spending more time exploring filmmaking, I should switch careers but that I should do it passionately. It was brave of him to say that because he started off as a driver but wanted to work for himself. He started a company with his savings but faced losses and fell into depression. Despite that experience he still supported me. He was the first person to really push me. He passed away in 2016.
The film doesn’t get cynical. There is a sense of hope and positivity in the midst of loss. The parental bond is beautifully captured. There is the comfort of community despite people also being intrusive…
One of the things I wanted to portray in the film is the acceptance that I got from my parents. I was lucky that they loved me so much that for them accepting my sexuality was not a big problem. Most of the time we only see struggle in queer films. That is true for many people. But I felt that we need to see the other side as well. I wanted to normalise queerness.
My mother and I don’t talk a lot. We are the quiet ones but my partner has a very different relationship with his mother. So the way Anand keeps his head in his mother’s lap, I never did that myself but my partner always used to do that. So, many things that I could never do in my life I wanted to do in the film.
You’ve very bravely tried breaking stereotypes. We assume urban, educated people to be progressive but it may not necessarily be so…
I’m happy that you see that. When you situate the story in a rural area you also solidify this thought that sexual identity and orientation are natural and are not about the place or economic strata. That’s why I used my own economic background. Many queer people are from the underprivileged classes and castes and I hope they will see themselves in the film.
Coming to the visual rhythm of the film and the soundscape, I like how you move between tight close-ups and long shots and your use of situational sounds...
I wanted to create a portrait of that time of bereavement that I had experienced. Most of the time I was just sitting in one place with my mom and we’d just be observing things. There’d be people coming and going, talking, eating, telling us to do this or that. I was hearing voices from here and there. I wanted to recreate that.
In the mourning period, when you have lost someone, time seems to slow down because of the sudden void. I wanted that slowness in the film. I wanted the wide shots to show the space, the houses and the outdoors because I wanted my character to be seen in the real world all the time. I only wanted to go close when the protagonists were together.
With your film at Sundance, things have begun very auspiciously this year for Indian, and specifically Marathi cinema. But the irony is that a lot of internationally celebrated films don’t get the right push at home.
Thankfully, with the kind of response All We Imagine As Light and Girls Will Be Girls got, we are hopeful that we will also get the chance to come to the audience here and we’ll be looking forward to that.