Chinese-produced Meghalaya’s Rapture is the first Garo-language film in Locarno Film Festival 2023

Rimdogittanga (Rapture) by Dominic Sangma is the first Garo language film to premiere at the Locarno film festival (Photo: Anna Films)

Two years before the pandemic came, Dominic Sangma etched his name in the history books by directing the first-ever Garo language feature film to be screened at an international film festival. Ma.Ama, the story of a man waking up every morning and waiting for his wife who has been dead for 30 years, premiered in the international competition section of the Mumbai Film Festival in 2018. The next year, Ma.Ama, Sangma's debut feature, went to the Shanghai film festival and won the Best Cinematography award.

Dominic Sangma studied direction and scriptwriting at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata (Photo: Anna Films)

Four years later, Sangma, who lives in the Garo hills of Meghalaya, is ready for the world premiere of his sophomore feature, Rimdogittanga (Rapture), at the 76th Locarno Film Festival in southern Switzerland. Rimdogittanga will compete for the Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present category of the festival, which is being held during August 2-12.

"The Filmmakers of the Present category is for the first and second features of a director. It's a huge honour to premiere a Garo language film for the first time in Locarno," says Sangma, who studied direction and scriptwriting at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata. Shot entirely in the Garo hills, the 127-minute film has a cast of non-professional actors from Nongthymmai Garo village, the adjacent Umdem, and Selbagre near Tura in the Garo hills.

"The actors are all villagers from the Garo hills," says Sangma. "I also trained many crew members in art direction, direction, costume design and as camera assistants. The main crew of cinematographer, editor and sound are all my batchmates from SRFTI," he adds. "They came to Meghalaya to support me. It was like doing a diploma film again."

Dominic Sangma's debut feature, Ma.Ama, won the National Award for the Best Feature Film in Garo Language in 2018 (Photo: Anna Films)

If Ma.Ama, which won the National Award for Best Feature Film in Garo Language in 2018, handled the high status of women in the matrilineal society of Meghalaya, Sangma's new film is about the fear and divide in the contemporary Indian society. He started writing the script of Rimdogittanga as the Northeast and the rest of the country were witnessing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens.

Rimdogittanga tells the story of a village in Meghalaya's Garo hills torn apart by the fear of intruders. The residents begin to suspect strangers arriving in their village surrounded by forests after a teenager goes missing during a search for cicadas, an insect devoured by the community for its culinary benefits. Meanwhile, a corrupt pastor announces an apocalyptic relief fund warning of darkness that would last 80 days.

"As a child, I experienced the fear of rumoured child kidnappers stalking the village at night. Every night the villagers would take turns to guard the village. One day, a stranger was caught. Unfortunately the villagers couldn't understand his language and he was severely beaten almost to death. This incident was justified and rationalised and we were strongly warned to keep it to ourselves," Sangma says in his director's statement. "With Rimdogittanga I want to erase or at least blur the line between 'them' and 'us'."

Rimdogittanga was shot entirely in the Garo hills of Meghalaya with non-professional actors and locally trained technicians (Photo: Anna Films)

The film's shooting was hit by the pandemic, paving the way for a community-based production that was less dependent on the industrial model. Crew were trained locally as hiring technicians from Mumbai became impossible due to COVID travel restrictions. Sangma and his production team cast villagers from the Garo hills who had never acted before, in leading roles.

Garo hills resident Eva Gunme R Marak, who has never produced a film before, came on board as the main producer with Sangma's own homegrown production house, Anna Films. "I extended my arms to a local boy to help a member of the Garo community to take a film from our community to the world," says Marak. "I don't know much about films, but I handled the cast, crew, location and logistics. I became a film producer by default. It was a monumental task, but a great experience," she adds. "Nobody knows about us who live in the Garo hills. Now with the film the world will know."

Chinese filmmaker and producer Xu Jianshang, who produced Ma.Ama, continues her collaboration with Sangma, whom she first met at the Beijing Film Academy in 2014 when the young director's Garo language SRFTI diploma film, Echoes, was in competition at a short film festival in the Chinese capital. "Xu was then a student of direction at the Beijing Film Academy. After the festival we kept in touch and when I started writing Ma.Ama she said she was interested in producing the film," says Sangma. Sun Li, another Chinese producer who funds arthouse films, joined the production towards the end.

"The production was challenging," says Riksil K Marak, another Garo hills resident who joined as production manager.  "This is my first time working in a feature film," says Riksil, who wanted to work in cinema after watching Sangma's diploma film in 2014. "We hadn't seen that kind of artistic film based on our community before," he says. "I was certain I wanted to work in films and with Dominic. "We had locations across the Garo hills and travelling from one place to another with all the equipment was a huge challenge," recalls Riksil, who learned his work along the way. Gaido Debra Sangma, an electrician who fixed things at homes in Shillong, was trained to become the assistant art director in the film.

The Filmmakers of the Present category has 14 entries from around the world, including Rimdogittanga and another Indian film, Whispers of Fire & Water, directed by Delhi-based debutant filmmaker Lubdhak Chatterjee, which will premiere on August 8. Rimdogittanga received Rotterdam film festival's Hubert Bals Fund for script development in 2019, production fund from Swiss film fund Visions Sud East in the same year and post-production fund from Doha Film Institute in 2022.