When Nilaanjan Reeta Datta was studying at the Film and Television Institute (FTII) in Pune, away from Assam where his family then lived, he had Assamese friends who had lost a brother, some who had lost their families, to “gupta hotya” (secret killings). These killings were gruesome; mutilated bodies often floated up the shore of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries. Many Assamese families have a “secret killing” story. This violent spate, supposedly an offshoot of a militant battle of one-upmanship between ULFA on the one hand and surrendered members of ULFA, better known as SULFA, and the state’s police machinery on the other hand, spelled gruesome terror between 1998 and 2001. It was the lowest, darkest phase of systemic violence that Assamese people have had to endure since the rise of ULFA militancy since the late 1980s — more than 1,100 innocent civilians are reported to have been killed during those four years.
Datta, a National Award-winning filmmaker, bases his new film Shadow Assassins, releasing in Cineapolis theatres across metros and in all theatres in Assam today, on the facts that Justice KN Saikia’s Commission’s report presented about these “secret killings”. In 2018, based on a writ petition, the Guwahati High Court declared the constitution of the KN Saikia Commission invalid. Speaking from Guwahati before the release of the film, Datta said, “The assailants still remain a mystery, and that continues to cast the shadows on survivors and their families.”
Shadow Assassins is one of the very few Hindi films about insurgency in the Northeastern states, directed and written (along with Rohit Kumar, Raaghav Dar and Bhushan Ingole) by someone who has firsthand experience of being touched by the aftermath of militancy in Assam since his childhood. Datta has lived in Nagaon, Tezpur and other districts of Assam. Datta recalls, “I remember travelling on night buses on the stretch between Gohpur and Guwahati. The Army checkpoints were not something we used to look forward to. For women especially it used to be humiliating and traumatic. They would ask women and young girls to come down from the bus and look at them voyeuristically up and down, intimidate them, things like that. That has stayed in my head since those days,” Datta says.
Such a scene plays out in Shadow Assassins early on, when an Army officer stops the protagonist Nirbhay Kalita (Anurag Sinha) and his girlfriend Rimli (Mishti Chakraborty) while they are biking along a deserted Guwahati street at night. The big man in uniform flashes a torchlight on Rimli and asks her to run her own hands down her torso and thighs while his eyes follow her hands. Nirbhay is a college student in Pune, visiting home and his family — a brother (Hemant Kher), a doting mother, a pregnant sister-in-law, a sister and a nephew — in Guwahati. The family home, a typical single-storey, gable-roofed “Assam-type” house with roomy porches and verandas — once architectural ordinariness, and now, perhaps, a vanishing relic — is one of many authentic detailing in Datta’s film, shot by cinematographer Gargey Trivedi with minimum ornamental fuss and with a documentarian’s rigour, largely in Guwahati. Datta works with actors and crew members from both Assam and Mumbai.
The political turmoil in his home state, and the constant reminder to his family of a brother who has left home and is suspected to have joined a militant group, engulf Nirbhay and his family, triggering a chain of events that radically alters the course of Nirbhay’s life. The story of Shadow Assassins has a linear graph, and has a mass appeal literalism about it. A deliberate directorial decision, says Datta, “Although there has been some films from Assam and set in Assam that the world outside has seen, it is still extremely hard to sell a film set in this part of the country in Mumbai. My decision to make it in Hindi instead of Assamese and to keep the treatment simple is deliberate; my thinking is, this is how the film will reach a wider audience.”
Datta’s treatment of his narrative is literally worlds apart from his first feature film The Head Hunter (2016), set in the hauntingly beautiful forests of the Nameri National Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh.
Apu (Nokshaa Saham), a tribal from the feared Wancho tribe that was once known for head-hunting and cannibalism, who guards the forest fiercely, especially from those who want to build a road through it, feeds elephants, takes care of a pet rabbit called Land, and prays to pebbles. A tribal boy, working for the government (Mrigendra Konwar), is given the responsibility of luring Apu out of the jungle, which he does. It is Apu’s first brush with cigarettes, money and cars. The road comes up swiftly after Apu’s house is razed. When he is dropped back to his jungle, his life changes forever. The scene of the inauguration of the road and the closing scene hits you like a head-hunter’s axe would. In recent times, Amar Kaushik’s Bhediya projects the same man-and-nature conflict set by the forests of Arunachal Pradesh with a lush, mainstream lens. Datta’s film, which won Best Film in the Arunachali Wancho language at the National Film Awards, is a meditative and wry narrative.
As a film from the region, Shadow Assassins gets the Assam-specific details right through the kind of Assamese-twanged Hindi the characters speak, the milieu’s habits and dressing, the locations in Guwahati, and the food. That itself is an achievement in authenticity. Recently, Anubhav Sinha’s conscience-pricking film Anek had some shockingly lazy generalisations—reminiscent of Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se.. from 1998. Anek is set in “the Northeast”, against the backdrop of its complex, long history of violent secessionist movements. Except it is stripped of all complexity. The cars have “NE” number plates. The setting could be Manipur, or Nagaland — or name any of eight states of the region.
This part of the country has a staggering range of cultural groups, faiths, languages and histories, and the disenchantments of various communities and tribes with the Indian Union is equally diverse. In most narratives, all the differences get thrown into a common pot of violent discontentment for the purpose of plot. Both of Datta’s films, Shadow Assassins in a more direct, plot-driven way, have great sensitivity towards social and historical specificities. “I have around 12 scripts in the works, all with a theme related to the Northeast,” Datta says.
The release of Shadow Assassins across Indian cities is hopefully a beginning. The region’s stories need compassionate and immersive raconteurs and visual thinkers.
Northeastern non-violence
Films from Assam that have made a mark for subjects other than insurgency and violence.
The best cinema from the Northeast have not been related to the region’s politics and insurgency-related violence. Two of Assamese cinema’s biggest names are Bhabendranath Saikia, a polymath and filmmaker whose film Agnisnan (1985) not only won the National Award for Best Assamese Film, but shattered many beliefs and thoughts entrenched in conventional Assamese society about marriage, fidelity and women’s choice. The films of Jahnu Barua, the most prolific director to have emerged from Assam, have themes as diverse as man-and-nature conflict, the traps of domesticity, the idea of “otherness” and being an outsider, loneliness and militancy.
Bollywood actor and guerilla filmmaker Kenny Basumatary is as “local” Assamese as it gets. He started with the campy martial arts comedy Local Kung Fu in 2013, which gained a cultish following, followed by Local Kung Fu 2 (2017) and Local Utpaat (2022).
Bhaskar Hazarika’s Amish (2019) is a taste-shattering film about erotic gluttony that travelled to film festivals the world over. His latest, Emuthi Puthi (2022) is about a rebellious teenager who needs money to escape home and her eccentric granny who wants to travel 500 km in search of a mythical fish for a perfect exit from the world. Both elope together from home one night, chased by one very harried policewoman.
One of the youngest Assamese filmmakers now is Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap, a graduate from the Satyajit Ray Film Institute in Kolkata, whose short film Mur Ghorar Duronto Goti (The Horse from Heaven) is an official entry at the Oscars 2023 in the Live Action Short Film category. An absurdist fable about the power of human perception and belief, it is about a man named Kuxhol who travels to the city from his village with Goti, who he claims to be the fastest horse in the world. People around him find it bizarre that Goti is a donkey, not a horse. Kashyap spins his narrative such that the film becomes an invitation for the audience to believe that Kuxhol is right.
Other Northeast filmmakers to look forward to
Chow Partha Borgohain
His film 1962: My Country Land (2016) about a tragic aftermath of the Sino-Indian war of 1962, was screened at the 2016 Cannes International Film Festival.
Oinam Doren
A Manipuri filmmaker, whose documentary Songs of Mashangva (2010) was set in the difficult world of Tangkhul Nagas. His first documentary My Name is Eeooow (2017), shot in a small village in Meghalaya, travelled to many film festivals around the world.
Wanglen Khundongbam
A Manipuri filmmaker with film education in London and Bangkok, Khundingbam made Pallepfam (2014), in which a man starts questioning reality as he starts living two, extremely different but parallel lives. Again, a film festival favourite.
Mapuia Chawngthu
At 38, an erstwhile wedding photographer from Lunglei, Mizoram, made the first Mizo feature film Khawnglung Run (2012), a tale of star-crossed lovers inspired by true events of the historical massacre of Khawnglung during 1856–1859. It released in theatres in Mizoram and travelled to several film festivals in India.
Sange Dorjee Thongdok
A noted filmmaker from Arunachal Pradesh, his film Crossing Bridges (2013) received the Rajat Kamal at the National Film Awards in 2013. He has also made two short films, Evening Café and Pratyabartan.
Kivini Shohe
Kivni Shohe is a filmmaker from Nagaland. His film, Oh My Soul (2015) explores the struggle of three homosexual men in Dimapur, Nagaland. It is the first ever documentation of a community haunted by taboo and denial.
Wanphrang Diengdoh
Wanphrang Diengdoh is a filmmaker from Meghalaya who has made award-winning films like 19/87 (2011), Because We Did Not Choose (2017), Where the Clouds End (2019), Lorni – The Flaneur (2019), among others. Significantly influenced by his upbringing in Shillong, Diengdoh challenges preconceived notions of identity through his work. He is also a musician of Shillong’s politico-punk band Tarik.
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