At 29, writer-director Rohan Apte has cemented a film language about netherworlds and fantasy like he was always a fan of the horror genre. “More than horror I think it is a fascination for other worlds and objects that represent emotions and histories,” says Apte, about his short but assured oeuvre of two short films — Maya, in which a magical drink propels destinies and behaviours; and his new film, Varas, which gets its India premiere at the Wench Film Festival, the country’s leading film festival for horror and genre films, in Mumbai on February 28.
A still from the short movie Varas
Varas is an intriguing combination of horror and social commentary. Think of Apte’s language as an inspired re-channeling of the Roman Polanski classic Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Rahi Anil Barve’s period folk horror masterpiece Tumbbad (2018). Apte mentions Rosemary’s Baby as one of his seminal inspirations. “The look of Varas is definitely very inspired by Tumbbad. My production designer, Apurva Mehra, in fact, worked with Barve earlier,” Apte says.
The narrative propeller is a coil of generational patriarchy in a family set somewhere in rural India. The setting: A dilapidated mansion surrounded by dark green foliage; in it, a family in toxic stasis, in need of an inherited family curse to be broken. The man, a brother and husband (Tejas Ravishankar) wants to sacrifice his physically-challenged sister (Parul Rana) to break the curse, so that he and pregnant wife (Gauri Deshpande) can leave past injustices of his family behind. A chained wooden cupboard, blood-stained cotton swabs, a circle made of oil lamps — which of these do the three unlock to find an answer?
In around 20 minutes, the world builds with rigorous attention to details, haunting visual schemes and lighting by cinematographer Pushkar Sarnaik, and an austere screenplay (co-written by Anuraj Rajadhyaksha) that depends more on visual architecture rather than expository dialogues. Varas has so far been screened at International Film Festival of South Asia Toronto, Razor Reel Flanders Film Festival in Bruges, and has been picked up by the Méliès International Festivals Federation, a network of 35 genre film festivals across 21 countries that celebrates fantastic, horror, and sci-fi cinema.
Apte grew up apathetic to cinema or social engagement. Born and raised in Thane to parents who wanted the best possible conventional education for him, Apte finished his mechanical engineering before he became a filmmaker. “During one of my semester breaks, my mom was watching the making of Lagaan. I got a glimpse into the world behind cameras. Shooting a film or putting together a film is mot common knowledge; we only know the actors. That was like a beginning. During weekends I tried taking acting classes and from there, it began,” Apte says. Growing up reading the Narnia and Harry Potter books, his love of fantasy, mythology and parallel worlds was on back-burner mode when he attended engineering college.
Being a competitive badminton player for several years, his filmmaking career got the boost it needed when he worked as an assistant to Amol Gupte during the filming of his Saina Nehwal biopic Saina (2021) . During the pandemic, Apte became a filmmaker. Himself, shoes, and other objects became his subjects. “The making of Maya with some money which my parents gave me, had a long break because I met with a serious accident, and the few of us who worked on it, who were there for the love of it, didn’t really believe the film was going to be made. But I had to complete it, and that was the biggest lesson as a filmmaker, to have patience and to work well with people” Apte says.
Both his films, and a feature film he is currently prepping to shoot (also about a world inhabited by three children and a magical flute that can kill as well as resurrect), demonstrate deep interest in the outlier, the one who has to change her destiny. “I definitely don’t get that from my family, but yes, I am into the concept of the chosen one — the kid who gets thrown into an eco-system without his willingness, and who has to make it better in his own way,” Apte says.
DETAILS:
Produced by: Gurmmeet Singh, Vishal Bajaj & Pratik Nandkumar More
Budget: ₹15 lakh
Running time: 19 minutes and 42 seconds
Language: Hindi
Short Stream is a monthly curated section, in which we present an Indian short film that hasn’t been seen before or not widely seen before but are making the right buzz in the film industry and film festival circles. We stream the film for a month on HT Premium, the subscription-only section in hindustantimes.com .
Sanjukta Sharma is a Mumbai-based writer and film critic. Write to her at sanjukta.sharma@gmail.com
