Sabar Bonda: Breaking stereotypes about queer love

Grief and love tenderly come together in debutant Rohan Parshuram Kanawade’s ‘Sabar Bonda’, the first-ever Marathi film and India’s only entry at Sundance Film Festival this year

Breaking away from the Western notions of queer love stories, Rohan Kanawade finds his gaze in Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears), the only Indian film at the Sundance Film Festival this year. The festival, held in Utah, runs from January 23 to February 2. 

Part autobiographical, part fiction, the film traces the tender love story of two young men in a Maharashtrian village. Hailing from a modest background, Anand, a young, educated, city-bred gay man, returns to his ancestral village to mourn the loss of his father and perform certain rituals for the satisfaction of his mother. 

During the mourning period, he develops a tender bond with a school friend he had left behind. If grief brings vulnerability, love provides him strength to survive the seemingly homophobic surroundings; much like cactus pears’ gentle and nutritious core despite being found in harsh and arid surroundings.

“I wanted to tell a queer story grounded in our society and culture where coming out to parents is not always a sad memory,” says Rohan ahead of the film’s premiere at Sundance, the confluence of the best of Independent cinema. 

As a child, Rohan says he fell in love with the film projector and the “light that emerged from the little dark holes”. After dabbling in interior design, he found his true calling in cinema. Though Rohan has more favourite films to recount than favourite filmmakers, he rates Satyajit Ray as an inspiration for the way the master portrayed some of his rural stories. Then there is Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan who, like Rohan, used his parents and cousins to tell his stories in his initial forays.

He finds Celyan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and Clouds of May close to his sensibility and gushes about Michael Haneke’s Funny Games and Amour. “Filmmakers like him create experiences. I also wanted to create an experience for the audience. He pushed me to explore different ways to tell a story.”

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