Kuch Sapney Apne (Dreams Such as Ours) begins like a typical Bollywood movie. A young photographer saunters through a pretty city in Europe to the accompaniment of a peppy song. He mushily declares his commitment to his live-in partner back home. But a rift soon emerges in the relationship that will require outside intervention to be repaired.
The difference between Kuch Sapney Apne and other Bollywood movies is the sexuality of its couple: they are gay.
There are other strands in the Hindi film by Sridhar Rangayan and Sagaar Gupta. The tension between Kartik and Aman runs parallel to the fractured ties between Kartik’s mother Vasudha and her orthodox husband Damodar. Vasudha’s efforts to defend Kartik are intertwined with her own resistance to Damodar’s stifling ways. A further sub-plot examines the journey of a repressed trans-woman.
Kuch Sapney Apne consciously harnesses the tropes of populist cinema to look closely at the Indian LGBTQ community following the Supreme Court’s historic judgement in 2018 decriminalising homosexuality. Criminals no more, seemingly free to love and live openly with willing partners, the queer community nevertheless faces old and new hurdles, the movie sensitively explores.
“The struggle for coming out is perennial – no matter however empowered you are, you are put down and discriminated against in some way or the other, not just in India but across the world,” Rangayan told Scroll.
Kuch Sapney Apne will be released in cinemas on February 21. The 121-minute film is a sequel to Sridhar Rangayan’s Evening Shadows (2018), about how Vasudha comes to terms with Kartik’s sexuality. Co-written with Saagar Gupta, Evening Shadows resonated so strongly with families of LGBTQ children that a support group called Sweekar emerged, Rangayan and Gupta said.
“A lot of people had been asking about what had happened to the characters in Evening Shadows,” Rangayan said. “Also in 2018, the Supreme Court verdict came out. We felt that we needed a film that talks about the contemporary aspirations of parents of LGBTQ children and LGBTQ people themselves.”
The stories that came out of Sweekar, which has at least 700 members, found their way into Kuch Sapney Apne, Gupta added. “At least in the metros, parents are opening up,” Gupta said. “With Section 377 going away, it has given them the confidence that their child is no longer a criminal. Now, their concern is to find a partner for their child.”
Some bits of Kuch Sapney Apne were inspired too by Rangayan and Gupta, who have been a couple for 30 years. “The film is trying to normalise a love story, with two men at the centre of the story instead of a man and a woman,” Rangayan observed. “It’s a very conscious choice to subvert the Bollywood format. Within a small budget, we have tried to increase production values, and we have included three songs. Every story need not revolve around a heterosexual couple. The family dramas are the same.”
Mona Ambegaonkar, who drew appreciation for playing Vasudha in Evening Shadows, reprises her role in the sequel. The new cast members include Satvik Bhatia (India Lockdown, Kota Factory) as Kartik, Arpit Chaudhary as Aman, Shishir Sharma as Kartik’s obdurate father Damodar, Abhay Kulkarni and Veenah Nair.
The verdict against Section 377 has thrown up positive developments as well as revealed old faultines, Rangayan and Gupta said. “Things have definitely become more open – there are more discussions, events and support systems for LGBTQ people,” Rangayan said. “The police discrimination has gone, although some amount of blackmailing is still going on. Other identities have emerged, such as trans and non-binary. There is much more information. I would say that around 20% more people came out after 2018 – but that’s still mostly in the big cities.”
From the filmmaking perspective, there are many more LGBTQ stories, especially in streaming shows. However, some of these narratives use LGBTQ identity as a gimmick to produce a sensational twist, rather than trying to empathise with characters in meaningful ways.
“In India, we have become a bit of a tick box, which is kind of sad,” said Rangayan, a long-time activist as well as a founder-member of the advocacy group Humsafar Trust. “There are LGBTQ characters in web series just to be woke. For me, that isn’t a way to go ahead. For instance, why is a female cop shown as a lesbian without her back story being explored? We need to have fuller stories around our community.”
Funding a movie like Kuch Sapney Apne, assembling a cast and securing theatrical distribution is hardly easy when no big-name actors are involved, Rangayan and Gupta added.
“Actors do ask a lot of questions – will there be intimate scene, and how intimate,” Rangayan said. “They feel that they will be stereotyped. We need to position the LGBTQ community at a level where they are confident. Especially with regard to trans characters, there are so many talented trans actors who can perform such roles with greater accuracy, like Trinetra Haldar, Bonita Rajpurohit and Lauren Robinson.”
To dispel the myths and prejudices surrounding the LGBTQ community, Rangayan and Gupta began the Kashish Pride Film Festival in 2010. “We started Kashish because we wanted a film festival in the mainstream space that was open to non-LGBTQ people too,” Rangayan said. “The emphasis was also on good cinema that could be watched on the big screen.”
Gupta, who is the programming head at Kashish, has not only seen audiences grow over the years, but also changes in the themes of movies. “Several films in the past were about coming out, but more interesting aspects of the whole spectrum are now emerging,” Gupta said.
While the films shown at Kashish struggle to get a theatrical release, Rangayan and Gupta have made efforts to push onto streaming platforms, such as Netflix, MX Player (which has since been taken over by Amazon Prime) and Disney+ Hotstar (now merged with JioCinema).
The mission to bring LGBTQ stories into the mainstream is necessarily relentless. On occasion, Rangayan and Gupta have curated film packages for the PVR-Inox multiplex chain. Kuch Sapney Apne will be released on a limited number of screens at PVR-Inox and Cinepolis cinemas across the country.
“Conversations around LGBTQ issues will always remain on the margins – that is what we have seen across the world,” Rangayan said. While the landscape has changed considerably since he made his first film Gulabi Aaina, about a drag queen, in 2008, some of the old problems haven’t gone away.
“We have to beg each and every time,” Rangayan said. “I wish more independent distributors would come forward to support films like Kuch Sapney Apne. We managed to make Evening Shadows with the money we got from Netflix, which picked up the film for a three-year period.”
Gupta quoted a line from Kuch Sapney Apne, a film that is authentic as well as hopeful: “One step at a time.”
