How to make inde­pen­dent movies in India today

At 26 years old, Shub­hashish Bhutiani is already on his way to become a lead­ing fig­ure of Indi­an, and hope­ful­ly glob­al cin­e­ma, and his rise has noth­ing to do with Bol­ly­wood. After two short films, his first fea­ture, Hotel Sal­va­tion, a father-and-son road trip movie tinged with tragedy, pre­miered at the 73^rd Venice Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. We spoke to Bhutiani about his expe­ri­ences as a young Indi­an film­mak­er. His inno­v­a­tive approach to cin­e­ma reflects his young age, open-mind­ed­ness and the dynam­ics of a glob­al community.

“As a film­mak­er, you have to strate­gise, you have to think of how to get the most out of the resources you have. You also realise that you have to work with dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple: some are hun­gry, some are in love with the script and so the mon­ey comes sec­ond. There are some who do oth­er jobs for mon­ey. For this film, you don’t work for the mon­ey. And that is real­ly fun, because every­one is tru­ly involved in the movie. It cre­ates an amaz­ing energy.

“It was my desire to work with a young crew, because I knew they would give every­thing they had, whether it was in terms of research or time. My pro­duc­tion design­er, for instance, did not have much to cre­ate a set, but I knew that she would get it done no mat­ter what. And this was my atti­tude as well: I had to make this film, no mat­ter what. It is like a mis­sion in a way. I have heard many times that it’s like lead­ing an army and it does feel that way.

“India is famous for IT and engi­neers. Yes­ter­day, in Lon­don, I told a taxi I was here for work and he said, ​‘What do you do, IT?’. It’s a sur­pris­ing choice for some peo­ple, espe­cial­ly tra­di­tion­al peo­ple. But at the same time, if you come to Mum­bai, me and my friends often joke that it feels like every­body is involved in film in some way. A lot of peo­ple are. You ask peo­ple on the street who is in film, and a lot of them will raise their hands. Mum­bai is like Los Ange­les. It has a sim­i­lar feel­ing. You have a big film cul­ture there. I am based in Mum­bai, although I am lucky to trav­el to many places. Mum­bai is where we make a lot of films in India, where the Hin­di film indus­try exists. But they are many oth­ers in India.”

“My two cin­e­matog­ra­phers have dif­fer­ent back­grounds to me, so what you see on screen, what we pro­duce, is kind of this weird amal­gam. I do think that it is very sub­con­scious. If you check my phone and look at what I lis­ten to today, it is music from all over the world. It is the same for cin­e­ma: I watch Indi­an cin­e­ma but also cin­e­ma from all over the world. In films, we don’t make direct ref­er­ences to that, it just hap­pens. It’s not very defined, and it’s def­i­nite­ly not some­thing you can con­trol. But it does impact film production.

“My music com­pos­er, for instance, uses instru­ments from Argenti­na. He had ordered an instru­ment, the Ron­ro­co, and I had my Argen­tin­ian friend get it half-way: we met in Italy and I brought it back to India. Anoth­er great exam­ple is my com­pos­er: he asked an Israeli friend of his to pro­duce the orches­tral piece at some point of the film. I have nev­er met this guy, but he has con­tributed in a big way. For my post-pro­duc­tion, we also received the Asian Cin­e­ma Fund. I also had Kore­ans work­ing on the film. It was tru­ly three con­ti­nents work­ing on the film. It was not my design: it’s not some­thing I knew would hap­pen from the start, but it just did.

“On some lev­el, my job is to enter­tain. Film is an amaz­ing medi­um where you can com­mu­ni­cate many things by hav­ing someone’s atten­tion. You can tell some­one some­thing about the world, with­out mak­ing them feel that you have said some­thing overt or exag­ger­at­ed way. It’s like a mag­ic trick, it has to enter a sub­lim­i­nal lev­el. I think that, in some way, you have to reflect on the world. It can be a love sto­ry, about find­ing the nature of love today or 50 years ago and how it has changed, or it can be about pol­i­tics or fam­i­ly. In Hotel Sal­va­tion, the mes­sage is about reli­gion and tra­di­tion. Peo­ple say some­times that two Indias exist: the old and the new. But I dis­agree. For me, a thou­sand Indias exist. Each cul­ture is so unique, my coun­try is like a continent.

“India has a long tra­di­tion of being a peace­ful coun­try, and some­times I am a lit­tle alarmed by some of the things that are going on. I am real­ly afraid of the vio­lence that takes place; that sense of fear must not over­shad­ow a coun­try which has so much beau­ty and such a rich his­to­ry of peace. Gand­hi is an icon of peace through­out the world. We can­not afford to lose that. I don’t mind pro­pa­gan­da if its peace­ful, if it’s about fam­i­ly or love. Cin­e­ma can be used as a tool to send a mes­sage that the world is becom­ing more diverse. Hope­ful­ly after peo­ple watch my movie they can dis­cov­er some­thing new about their own culture.”

Hotel Sal­va­tion is released on 25 August. Read our review here.