Rima Das’s Village Rockstars 2 begins in the same way as its predecessor: Dhunu stands in the middle of a field, lost in her thoughts. But there is much that is different for the Assamese film’s heroine.
Ten years old in the first movie from 2017, Dhunu now finds her world expanding as well as contracting. She has mastered the guitar that enchanted her in her childhood. She has a boyfriend, but she worries about her hard-working mother.
The adolescent yearns to be the carefree, tree-climbing girl she once was as well as a responsible daughter. The verdant land to which Dhunu is so firmly bound is threatened by flooding and construction projects. Dhunu is often seen gazing into the distance or upwards at the sky, caught between action and contemplation.
Village Rockstars 2 carries forward Rima Das’s trademark storytelling style – the unhurried shot-taking, the free-wheeling editing approach, the lyrical depictions of characters who are one with their natural environment. Village Rockstars 2 was premiered in the recently concluded Busan International Film Festival, where it won the Kim Jiseok Award for Best Film.
Das’s fifth feature will make its Indian landing at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival (October 18-23) in the South Asia Competition section. MAMI will also screen the anthology film My Melbourne, featuring contributions by Das, Kabir Khan, Onir and Imtiaz Ali.
For Das, Busan was a special experience not just because of the award, but also because Bhanita Das, who plays Dhunu, came along. “She is grown up now and understands much more, so she had a good time,” Rima Das said about the actor. “She is brave, and I hope she can pursue acting in the future.”
The first Village Rockstars was noteworthy not just for its poetic filmmaking but also the use of non-professional actors. A self-taught director who also writes, shoots, edits and produces her movies, Das designed Village Rockstars around the gentle rhythms of the rural locations as well as the capabilities of the untrained cast – some of whom were from her extended family.
Bhanita Das is Rima Das’s cousin. Basanti Das, who plays Dhunu’s widowed parent in both the films, is Bhanita Das’s own mother. The mother-daughter bond, which was key to Village Rockstars, is vital to the new movie too.
“In the last scene in Village Rockstars, Bhanita played the guitar in the film for the first time and in real life too,” Rima Das said. “I wondered what Dhunu’s journey would be like. Lots of people have talent and aspirations. Everybody wants to be somebody, but it isn’t always possible.”
Das began filming Village Rockstars 2 in 2020, between Bulbul Can Sing (2018) and Tora’s Husband (2022). But her latest project, which she co-produced along with Akanga Film Asia in Singapore, ran into a few hurdles.
While looking at the edit, Das felt that “something was missing”, that there were gaps in her screenplay that needed filling.
“I edited Village Rockstars in two months but the new film took me at least one-and-a-half years,” Das recalled. “I did a lot of reshoots. Layers were added to increase the complexity. The challenge was to maintain the purity and nuances of the first part. It was not at all easy, even though the film looks simple.”
Das’s movies give the feeling that she is invisibly spying on a group of people. Yet, she scripts nearly all the unfiltered conversations about matters quotidian and significant, the fly-on the-wall moments, the observances of characters navigating inner and outer worlds.
Das explained how she achieves documentary-level realism within the realm of fiction.
“How the characters live, their problems with money and land, these are real, but the relationships come out of my imagination and observation of life,” Das said. “I look at my films from the point of view of the audience. More than technique while shooting, I am looking for emotion. I follow my intuition on location.”
Das’s felicity with dialogue that doesn’t sound scripted was inspired by her attempt to pursue an acting career in Mumbai in the 2000s. “When I was giving auditions, I would find it so hard to say the dialogue,” Das recalled. “Language was a barrier too. So I write in a way that when the actors are performing the lines, it looks natural and easy.”
The 47-year-old filmmaker pointed to a sequence in Village Rockstars 2 in which Dhunu’s friend, who performs with her in the school band, says she wants to experience suffering so that she can feel the music better. “You can turn your tragedy into beautiful music – the pain after a heartbreak is unmatched,” says the teenager with a twinkle in her eyes.
“I haven’t actually heard anyone saying this, but I wrote down the lines and the actor, Junumoni Boro, beautifully performed them,” Das said.
Having directed several features now, starting with Man With the Binoculars in 2016, filmmaking should come easier to Das, but it doesn’t necessarily.
“Shooting myself isn’t easy, I get exhausted,” Das said. In the anthology film My Melbourne, Das worked with a professional crew, passing on the tasks that she would normally perform herself.
“In Village Rockstars 2, we had to work with a small unit since it was difficult to shoot otherwise,” Das said. “For my next projects, I have realised that I need to work more on my scripts, add more layers. The next time, I want to be a bit more prepared.”
Her upcoming scripts include a folk horror film. Das hopes to maintain her independence and self-reliance in her future endeavours.
“Satisfaction and creative satisfaction are very important to me – success matters, but it is momentary too,” Das said. “With Village Rockstars, I got more than I expected very early on. But I am evolving, I am changing as a woman. I don’t want to restrict myself to coming-of-age films. It might be disorienting, but I need to cross that boundary.”
