Diwa Shah was excited she was going to fulfil her dream of becoming a full-time writer. Born and raised in Nainital, Uttarakhand, she had recently returned home from England after a master's programme in creative writing. With a manuscript in tow Shah was ready to climb the heights. It was the end of 2019.
"I was a very passionate writer and wanted to write books," says Shah, reminiscing about her failed attempt to publish her first book. "Then COVID-19 came and destroyed everything." The novel didn't get published, but she began writing a story about what was unfolding in front of her eyes in her hometown, a picturesque hill station and a top tourism destination. With a lockdown and loss of jobs staring at their faces, Nepalese immigrant workers in Nainital were making an exodus to their villages across the India-Nepal border.
In the beginning of 2021, Shah expanded her story of daily wage workers from Nepal doing odd jobs in Nainital into a film script. If her unpublished novel was about an immigrant worker from Yemen in England, the film script centred on two young Nepalese workers striking a deal to stay back and make some money during the pandemic. Two years later, Bahadur the Brave, Shah's debut film, is an official selection at the San Sebastian Film Festival (September 22-30) in Spain, one of the oldest international film festivals in the world.
Part of the 71st San Sebastian Film Festival's programme for new directors from around the world, Bahadur the Brave tells the story of Hansi and his brother-in-law Dil Bahadur in the backdrop of a raging pandemic. Shot mostly in Nainital, its famous Mall Road and bazaars and the Indian side of Dharchula town on the border, the 83-minute film in Kumaoni, Nepali and Hindi draws attention to the lesser known lives of Nepalese immigrants, who work as porters in Nainital and are collectively called Bahadur.
The first feature film directed by a Kumaoni filmmaker to be selected to a major international festival, Bahadur the Brave shares a strong line-up in the festival's New Directors section that has entries from Japan, China, Colombia, Iran and Kazakhstan. Two Indian films — Amma ki Katha (Hindi/Urdu) by Nehal Vyas and Silan (Marathi) by Ashmita Guha Neogi — are part of the short films programme of the festival that has previously shown Satyajit Ray's Charulata (1964), Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay and Mrinal Sen's Antareen (1993).
"Workers from Nepal are called Bahadur because they are brave, strong and confident people," says Nepalese actor Rupesh Lama, who plays the role of Nepalese labourer Hansi in Bahadur the Brave. "Hansi is a porter in Nainital who wants to work and send money back home," says Lama, a theatre actor from Bhaktapur neighbourhood in Kathmandu who makes his feature film debut in Bahadur the Brave. "He is an honest man and a simple person," he adds.
Rahul Nawach Mukhia, a Darjeeling-based actor, plays the role of Hansi's brother-in-law Dil Bahadur. "I gave an online audition for the role during the lockdown," says Mukhia, who acted as a guide in the 2022 Hindi film Uunchai by Sooraj Bharjatya shot in the Everest base camp in Nepal. "I arrived a month before the start of shooting and worked as a labourer in Nainital to prepare for the role. Nobody knew I was an actor. I earned some money too," he adds.
"Few of the Nepalese labourers in Nainital have families living with them," says Shah. "Many of them live in a single room. They come from a lot of poverty from villages that don't have electricity," adds the director who cast several local non-professional actors in minor roles in the film. "We shot the film in Nainital for 15 days in March this year. We also got permission to shoot near the India-Nepal border," says Shah, who did street theatre in Delhi while studying as an undergraduate at the Gargi College in Delhi University.
Selected to the Work in Progress Lab at Film Bazaar, Goa last year, Bahadur the Brave won an award at the event that helped in colour grading at the Prasad Labs in Mumbai. Produced by Hardhyaan Films (Jhini Bini Chadariya (Hindi) by Ritesh Sharma) and Sinai Pictures (Pullu Rising (Malayalam) by Amal Noushad), the film is shot by Kolkata-based cinematographer Modhura Palit, who won the Angenieux Award for emerging cinematographers at the Cannes festival in 2019.
"A lot of people in India don't know about the daily struggle of the Nepalese immigrant labourers in our country," says producer Thomas Ajay Abraham of Sinai Pictures. "I felt it needed to be told to the world," adds the Thrissur-born Abraham, a trained sound engineer who worked with fellow sound engineers from Kerala, Rakesh KU and Jishnu Dev, in the film. "One aspect of Nainital is its beautiful landscape, but it co-exists with the grim reality of the lives of the immigrant labourers from Nepal," adds producer Visvesh Singh Sehrawat of Hardhyaan Films.
"The Kumaon region has no filmmaking history like Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu or Kerala," says Shah, who sees promise in the film's selection to the San Sebastian festival. "The production was extremely difficult, but now we have the hope that many people will watch globally what we have made in a small region."
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