This LSD 2: Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 actor’s indie film ‘It’s All in Your Head’ is an intimate portrayal of small-town youth

Miss Trans Queen India 2019 Bonita Rajpurohit, who was seen in LSD 2, and is seen here in a still from Dhruv Solanki's 'It's All in Your Head'.

Why do youngsters flock to the cities? For high-paying jobs and the allure of a better, fast-paced life, of course. But small towns have their own charm: languid pace, familiarity and camaraderie, where neighbours not only know one’s names but their family trees, likes and dislikes. The smiles and concerns feel more genuine and the world is a family. Sometimes, too close for comfort. Now imagine, what if the Kardashians were born in a rural Rajasthani family and lived on a budget in Vadodara? Dhruv Solanki’s debut feature, It’s All in Your Head, now showing on the OTT platform Gudsho, gives us a glimpse into that world. In the world of big star-struck OTTs, a platform like Gudsho is a blessing for indie makers. It gave Anamika Haksar’s experimental Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane Le Ja Riya Hoon (2018) a home.

A still from 'It's All in your Head'.

A new crop of independent filmmakers seems to be emerging from the Gujarati city. Earlier this year, Vadodara-based animator Ishan Shukla, known for a short film in Star Wars: Visions Volume 2 series, won the IFFR 2024 NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film for his superlative Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust at the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Solanki’s It’s All in Your Head stars Miss Trans Queen India 2019 Bonita Rajpurohit, among others, whom you’d have seen in Dibakar Banerjee’s just-released LSD 2: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha 2. The first LSD was edgy and rewrote the way mainstream films could be made in 2010. The second outing is about “Like, Share and Download”, young lives’ brush with digital dystopia. Solanki’s film looks at young people and the internet, too. But in a happy-go-lucky way.

It’s All in Your Head is an intimate portrayal of a family: no parents or adults in sight. It spans a day in the life of six siblings, in Vododara’s Fatehgunj, and their respective life problems. They have their individual vocations/professions and together run an online thrift store: Durty Fits. The film opens, in a smartphone aspect ratio or phone-screen size, with them celebrating a year of Durty Fits.

Manshree and Jyotsana Rajpurohit (right) in a still from 'It's All in your Head'.

A film can’t get more indie than this. Some of those who act are also part of the technical crew. Most are non-actors and all are cousins, the Rajpurohits. The eldest of them Jyotsana is also the producer and Bonita is also the editor on this film. In the film, Jyotsana photographs young couples but her own relationship lacks the zing, her boyfriend doesn’t show up when she needs him. Bonita, a model, sleeps for long hours, goes skateboarding, makes influencer reels, rattles off sentences with mispronounced English words as Manshree pulls an affectitious act as a model. Deepshikha gets thrown out on streets by her close friend. Bhagyashree is stuck in a 9-to-6 accountant's job. And, they have a younger brother Bhuwnesh.

The posters of Sex And the City, Kill Bill and Girls TV series on these Gen-Z girls’ doors temporally places this film decades ago, but that would clash with the nowness of Instagram Reels.

Music (English pop) runs through film but feels forced at times.

Solanki made his film on iPhone 13 Pro Max in 4K. Now that Anurag Kashyap has said anybody with an iPhone can make a movie, indie filmmakers are following his dictum.

A still from Dhruv Solanki's film.

Solanki has shot on real locations, with natural/practical lights, in guerrilla-style. Recall the filmmaking style of Sean Baker? Stylistically, Solanki follows Baker’s Tangerine and The Florida Project: small budget, real people (non-actors), fictionalised real-life situations of underrepresented communities. Or like Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Boyhood. Albeit Linklater took 12 years to shoot Boyhood (2014): a time sculpture, a film about growing up. Solanki’s film, which could have felt like footages from a home video shoots but doesn’t, is documentary style of fiction feature filmmaking. And even though there is enactment involved, there is a certain natural ease to the real people playing themselves in the film. Solanki places the audience in the room, listening to and watching these characters, rarely breaking the fourth wall.

Produced by the young folks at Vadodara’s 1719 Film Factory, committed to creating New Age Indian content, It’s All in Your Head had its world premiere at Hurghada International Youth Film Festival, Egypt. Besides travelling to other festivals, it has been selected by Beth Sanders, faculty at Met Film School, Berlin as a case study for postgraduate film students. Solanki previously made an indie road-trip comedy ‘Blah Blah Blah’ and has developed a period action feature drama The Rebels of Shakambhari.

But despite the OTT boom — star-struck Netflix gave false hopes to independent filmmakers — the lives and travails of young adults have remained outside the periphery of mainstream cinema and filmmakers. If Netflix films like Archies and Kho Gaye Hum Kahan are mired in the trappings of SoBO (south Bombay) young lives, Netflix series Mismatched adapts the USA setting of the novel into Jaipur, where are the real stories of the mofussil and smaller town youth?

The title of this  coming-of-age film about 20-somethings made by 20-somethings, ‘It’s All in Your Head’, works at many levels. First, it’s about how external stimuli drive young minds. How young people build certain perceptions of others and themselves and calibrate their own responses accordingly. It is also about a clash between what we think and what the reality is. In the internet generation, it is, most pronouncedly, what curated personas of people put a show of on social media and what they actually might be IRL (in real life). But, most poignantly, the film’s title is a jibe at the urban/Tier I/Metro audience, who live in their own bubbles and have a certain stereotype about their peers from the smaller towns, much like how foreigners have an ‘Indian’ stereotype, that we come to our weddings on elephants.

The mumblecore is a cocktail of incoherent banalities, light-hearted banter and emotional moments. But the comedy, if intended, doesn’t land. The film stays authentic. On that count, Solanki doffs a hat to Ken Loach.

Here, there’s no beginning, middle and end here, the film, much like the lives of these youngsters, is in medias res, in the middle of a constant flux. To quote the Russian writer Anton Chekhov, “Any idiot can face a crisis — it’s the day to day living that wears you out.” The film is rooted in personal/lived experiences but the themes are universal. And, unlike most Indian visual content now, there are no big messaging here.