Hi Rohan. Thank you so much for taking time out of your packed schedule to talk with The Wise Owl. I know you have been travelling and are very busy with your film.

 

Let me start by quickly introducing you to our viewers and readers.

 

Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, is a self-made filmmaker raised in a Mumbai. He transitioned from interior design to filmmaking. His short films include Khidkee, Sundar, Ektya bhinti, among others. But the film that has had critics sitting up & taking notice is his debut feature Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) which has won him Sundance Award and Popular Choice Award at IFFLA 2025.

 

Congratulations on the awards your debut feature has won. How does it feel to be receiving so much critical acclaim.

 

RS: Cactus Pears walks a fine balance between fiction and autobiography. It unfolds in your ancestral village with local actors and a deeply personal narrative. How did your own experiences shape the emotional core of the film, and where did you draw the line between autobiography and fiction?

 

RPK: I will not call it autobiographical but the story is inspired by my experiences. Those experiences made me explore this theme, add fiction to it and change the reality to make it a completely different journey, at least for the central character.  So what inspired me to write this script of Cactus Pears was my experience when my father passed away in 2016 and I had to go to my village. I was born and raised in Mumbai and so was my dad but we always spent our summer vacations in the village. After my 10th standard I stopped going to the village because even at that age some of my relatives talked about my marriage. I was quite uncomfortable with those conversation so I just stopped going to the village. I did not visit the village for almost a decade but when my father passed away, my mom decided to go there so that everyone could be part of the mourning rituals. I had no escape. I had to go. I was 30 then and all everyone did was talk about why I was not married. It made me claustrophobic and I was not able to grieve the loss of my father.  The situation was uncomfortable as It would be for anyone, including heterosexual women working in the city.

 

Even though I was ‘out’ to my father and mother even before I went to the village for the mourning period, the rest of the family didn't know about my sexuality. What was important for me was that my parents knew about my sexuality. Also, for me my sexuality is not my identity, it is just a part of my life. I don't think that sexuality can be anyone's identity. If someone asks me who I am, I will not say I am a queer, I will say I’m a filmmaker. I didn't want acceptance from anyone else or from society for me. When I was there (village) I had to face these questions which at times were very triggering but I had to stay quiet because I did not want to stir the situation at that time. Although I was not connected with the relatives, my mother was.  She needed people around her in this tragic time.  I did not want to ruin it for her. So I just kept quiet and endured the pressure.

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At that point in time, I had this thought-what if I had a friend, then perhaps I could have sneaked out, away from the pressure. I thought to myself that this would make an interesting idea for a feature film. All I needed to do was change the journey for the character in the film, make it more tender and warm during this vulnerable time. I thought this other friend can be there for the central character and his journey can become more tender.  I felt  that this idea would allow me to incorporate my experiences as well as experiences of people around me. I also wanted to incorporate in the story the fact that the parents were aware of the character’s sexuality.

 

When people talk about queer films, it is always about the characters struggling to gain acceptance. Because of these films I was also very worried about my parent’s acceptance of my sexuality.  I was also worried to come out because my dad was working as a driver (he couldn't even finish school) while my mom is illiterate and can only write her name because my father taught her how to after their marriage. I didn’t think they would understand me. It so happened that one day I was feeling very sad. My father noticed it and urged me to tell him the reason, saying he could not understand my problem till I told him about it honestly. That's when I came ‘out.’ His response was a mature ‘it's okay.’ All he said was that it was most important for me to know about myself and that it was good that I hadn’t married. But I was worried that his relatives in the village would heckle him about this. But my dad reassured me.  He told me not to worry and that he would tell the relatives back in the village that I had a girlfriend who broke my heart.

 

Earlier, whenever I thought of coming out I would imagine all kinds of terrible scenes. But my experience was so different, so simple, essentially because my parents loved me and wanted my happiness above all else. Therefore they accepted me and my sexuality. I also know of so many friends whose parents did the same. And that’s when I started wondering why films just portray the struggle for acceptance and not cases where acceptance is wholehearted. Sure, some people have a bad experience, perhaps they are teased but a lot of us have been accepted without a struggle. I wanted to make a film that would portray my experience of  acceptance and positivity.

 

I come from the lower economic strata. My father was a driver and I was raised in a tiny house, as large as say your bedroom. It was one-room house with a bathroom, a small kitchen and a place where we all slept together. But I grew up with so much positivity and love. I have never seen this portrayed on screen.  

 

RS: What you said is correct. Education has nothing to do with a progressive mind-set. This is more than evident here.

 

RPK:  That is so true. We forget that everyone is human, everyone is wired differently. Sometimes even the illiterate people have great maturity. You don’t have to be educated for that. I met someone who is a cinematographer from FTI and comes from a fairly good family, an  educated family but when he came out, his parents took him to a conversionist therapist. So I wanted to craft my own narrative of positivity and acceptance in the film.

 

RS: Grief, longing, and queer love are intricately woven in Cactus Pears. To tie love and grief in this fashion is very challenging but you have melded these emotions so well. How did you balance the cultural rituals of mourning with the rediscovery of a forbidden or repressed affection?

 

RPK: To be very honest I was not even thinking of the challenge involved. My writing process is such that I just start writing. If I’m really passionate about some idea, or the idea has stayed with me for a long time, in this case 2016 to 2020, one day I just start writing- one scene giving me the idea for the next and so on. Even I don’t know how the story will end.  I don't plan the outline or the background for the character, I just start writing the story. During the time when I’m toying with idea, I make notes in my head, I see some visuals, some backgrounds in my head. I don't write anything but take a clue from conversations- sometimes conversations with my mom. Once Mom told me that one of my cousins had finally found a woman twice his age. When I expressed surprise she said that it was difficult for farmers to find brides because of a skewed sex ratio and also because most of the women are educated and prefer men who work in an office or in the city. So farmers are having a difficult time finding  a bride. They end up finding women twice their age or women who are divorced. I thought this is quite interesting-here was a situation that is helping the queer community in rural areas.  For me it was such a pressure. I come from a city. I am an interior designer and a filmmaker and so I am very good groom material. And I had to face so much pressure but for some of the farmers who are queer, it is such a happy situation. They do not have to say ‘no’ to marriage as the women are saying ‘No’ to them. So, I started using these situations in my narrative. My narrative just flows. I am also curious to know how the story will end. But in this case I was sure of one thing-this story will not end in a tragedy. It will not be a ‘they lived happily ever after’ of course but it would be a film that expresses optimism and positivity.

 

I didn't know what that (ending) would be and I had to find it through my writing process. I like this free flowing creative process. Once I tried following the conventional path, drawing the outline and background etc but when I actually started writing the script, it was something else altogether so I realised that this ( conventional script -writing) is not my writing process. I’m fine with my writing process which is more free flowing.

 

RS: So it is the ‘frames’ that come to your mind rather than the written word.  Right?

 

RPK: That is what it is. Screenplay is writing the images I am seeing in my head, images that the audience is going to see on the screen and not a literary text. My film (Cactus Pears) as you know has no background score, it completely relies on sound design. So I have incorporated all the sounds that you hear and when people read the script, they not only see the images but also hear the film (that is what is important). So I had to take this decision even before I started writing- that I would have to incorporate all of this from the beginning.

 

RS: The unusual thing about this film is that it subverts the stereotype that queerness is an urban phenomenon. You have with great lyricism and tenderness depicted a queer love story in a rural Maharashtrian setting. What challenges did you face both in terms of storytelling and reception? Maybe you felt that people may not respond to it or connect with it.

 

RPK: (Smiles) The only people who did not resonate with the film where the Financers.

 

RS: (laughs)They were not sure if the money would come in?

 

RPK: Not only that.  As I was saying before they (the financiers) felt that no one will watch this film. They said, who wants to watch a film about farmers, a film where there is no music, there is static camera-work and first time actors.

 

RS: Aha! First time actors. That is another thing I wanted to talk about. Were they non-professional actors?

 

RPK: No. All the actors in the film are professional actors. They are all trained theatre actors.  Even the actors portraying the villagers are trained theatre actors from that local area.

 

I wanted authenticity in the film, in terms of how the characters look, how they speak, their body language. They needed to look like characters from that region, people who had lived their lives there. That was really important for me and that is why I picked actors who can embody that and only people who knew the language. We cast villagers from that region so I could get the dialect and the look right.

 

RS: So this added to the credibility of the film.

 

RPK: Yes. So the character of Balya (played by Suraj Suman) who is from the village, is played by an actor who was born and raised just 20 minutes away from where we shot the film (we shot the film in my mother’s village). He studied acting from Lalit Kala Kendra in Pune and he's been doing theatre since then. Bhushan (played role of Anand) and Suraj (played role of Balya) are actually friends who met in that acting school and have been working together since then. I had this thought in my head before casting that I wanted actors whose journey reflected the journey of the characters they are portraying in the film. I wanted the actor who would play Balya to be from the region. I wanted the actor playing Anand to have a similar journey as that of Anand.  Someone who is born in the region but raised in the city. So Bhushan (who plays Anand) is from the region but he grew up in Surat. This would reflect in his dressing sense, in his dialect and so he speaks a more polished Marathi. I wanted a similar thing for the actor portraying the mother. She should be born and raised in the village but she should be someone who migrated to the city. This was true for Jayshri Jagtap  who played the role. She was raised in the village and was working there as a professor in a college and then she was married to Umesh Jagtap, a Marathi actor and came to the city where she attended an acting school and has been acting since then.

 

I managed to do what I had thought of doing but finding the right actors for the role took us a long time. I think this is important and you need to have patience and give time to all these processes. People don't get this kind of time to work on the film but when you have some unique vision you really need to have time and I'm so happy that my producer let me do all of this as it strengthened the unique vision for the film.

 

Because of that vision everyone was saying that this film is not going to work.  But I knew (says this emphatically and confidently) that people have not seen the kind of story that I am telling. It's also my unique way of telling the story. Sometimes we go to watch films of filmmakers because we know they are going to have their own point of you or their own unique way of telling the story and that is what interests us. I knew for sure that people would watch this film because of the unique way I would tell the story.

 

I can see the film in my head.  Sometimes it becomes very difficult to tell people that  this will work because they can't really understand the kind of film I’m seeing in my head. For this film I did the whole story board. Of the film that you see on the screen, I drew 90 percent of the film on paper. That gave me a chance to rewrite the whole film through images and my GOP Vikas actually took those images from the paper and translated them on the screen. But even after you do that people don't understand how the film is going to turn out. This is what happened in Cactus Pears. Now people say ‘oh this is really interesting.’ They are now congratulating us and some of them want to come on board after the success of the film. But we say no. I mean when we really needed support you guys didn’t help.

 

RS: That is the way of the world isn’t it. People follow you when you are successful.

 

RPK: When we announced the Sundance selections, so many sales agents, who had rejected us saying it is a difficult film for distribution, started saying they would be happy to reconsider it. But we told them we already have agents for sale and distribution who really believed in the film and not because of the announcement of the awards.

 

RS: (Laughing) It must be making you feel good to say ‘I told you so.’

 

RPK: This also happened with my short films. People would reject the film during the script stage and then when they saw the finished film they would express surprise and say ‘we didn't realise it's going to turn out like this.’ So people who make the decision to give you finance do not have the vision.

 

RS: They probably focus on the commercial aspects of the film rather than the creative aspect which is why they cannot connect with the film.

 

RPK: Exactly. What happens with me is that I don't like to make films that look and sound similar. With every film I try to find a different vision for the film. If you see my previous short film ‘U for Usha’, it looks completely different from this film. It has camera movement, it has background music, it has a completely different colour palette. ‘Khidkee’, is a black and white film, again a different kind of visual. When I am toying with the idea of a film, it keeps showing me the visuals, the kind of style that the story needs to have, the sound.  I try to follow that and that is why the vision for every film is so different. This confuses people. They think “this is not how his previous film was made.”

 

RS: You don’t have a signature style. So they cannot put you in a fixed frame. You keep experimenting.

 

RPK: (laughs) I don’t blame them.

 

RS: Rohan one last question. The name of the film ‘Cactus Pears’ is very evocative. Tell us why you called the film by this name. It is metaphorical of course but I would like you to talk about it.

 

RPK: I would love to hear your thoughts about the film. I made the film, you saw the film.  You experienced the film. What are your thoughts on this? Then I will share mine as well. I’m interested to know.

 

RS: (laughs) Well!! We can talk about that later but first I would like to know about what you think because I’m here to give people an insight into the way you have put together your creativity.

 

RPK: Cactus pears is a fruit that grows on cactus. We know it grows in a rugged environment, a harsh environment. It has fruit that is thorny but when you clean the thorns and open it, it is sweet and delicious from inside. It is hydrating, it has so many nutrients and because of that many farmers in India cultivate it and sell the fruit/plant to the pharma companies. So even though it (the cactus pear) is rare and grows in a rugged environment, it has so many benefits.  I thought that this fruit represents these two men in the film because these two men are also going through the pressure of society. There are  harsh conditions around them but they are still trying to navigate their life and trying to stay true to themselves. When they are together they share some very tender moments and the colour of the fruit, which is completely red, represents the tenderness of the relationship. So I thought this title is very interesting.

 

RS: It is certainly a very apt title because it focuses on the essence of what you are trying to say. It  slowly unravels.  Like you said, we have the rugged atmosphere and we have the prickles of the cactus but also the inner succulent, sweet fruit.

 

RPK:  But this was not the original name for the film.  During one of the first labs in India, my mentor Umesh Kulkarni was conducting an online lectures for all the participants. He asked us to give one image from our film that really represents the film. And during the subsequent discussion, the image that kept popping into my head was the image of the fruit and the cactus plant. I felt that the image of the catus pear was representative of my film and the theme of the film. I felt then that this was an apt name for the film but we finalised the name only at the post-production stage. So it took a really long time to zero-in on the name and decide that the film would go out into the world with this name.

 

RS: It is a wonderful name indeed. Thank you Rohan. It was wonderful talking to you. Thank you for giving us insights into your beautiful film. We wish you the very best in all your creative endeavours. We hope you make lots of films, keep experimenting and make lots of different films with different visions. We would love to watch them.

 

RPK: Thank you. I  just want to tell the audience through this conversation that we are working on the Indian theatrical release of the film. When the film releases, I really want the audience to support this film in the cinema theatres.

 

RS: I’m sure they will.

 

RPK: Please go to the cinema and watch the film. We made the film for a theatrical experience-the images and the sound. Go and watch the film, support the film for that is when things will change. There are so many filmmakers who want to make films and when audience starts supporting a film, the distributors will also begin to support such films.  

 

RS: I am sure that will happen. Wishing you the very best. Thank you so much.

 

RPK: Thank you.