Pakhi Abbas Tyrewala is back from the Toronto International Film Festival and she is visibly “excited and relieved”. Her Sikkimese film Pahuna: The Little Visitors was screened at the festival and received critical acclaim. “I had only seen the film in bits and pieces and in a hurry to get it ready for the festival, hadn’t got the chance to see the full feature at one go. I was very apprehensive as I know festival audience can be ruthless,” says Tyrewala of Pahuna . The film produced by Priyanka Chopra narrates the story of three Nepalese children separated from their parents and their arduous journey back home. “The 400-seater auditorium was packed and even before the last scene, the audience started clapping. I was more relieved than happy,” shares the director adding that the film is “a very heart-warming story” but also has strong underlying messages. “It talks about issues such as the refugee crisis, the displacement of children which are very relevant in the world we are living in,” asserts Tyrewala.
Facing rejection
Pahuna marks the first feature film of the former model and actor after her short film Kajaal on women empowerment, featuring Tamil actress Salony Luthra got an overwhelming response and is still making its way in the festival circuit. “I am a little overwhelmed with the response from the audience and juries,” she says. The 20-minute short film is about finding one’s inner strength — something the director herself had to imbibe when she approached producers to back Pahuna and got rejected every time. “To protect my dignity, I now say I have been rejected just 10 times. People were reluctant to back a first-time woman director who wanted to make a film on children, based in Sikkim,” she says of the period before Chopra decided to produce it in November last year. Tyrewala began shooting in February in the north-eastern state and also received financial assistance from the Sikkim state government and the Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI). “The CFSI will be dubbing the film in 14 Indian languages and will promote it through schools,” says the filmmaker. But Tyrewala doesn’t want to categorise Pahuna as a children’s film as the underlying issues in the film are far more complex. “It’s not a children’s film, it’s about children. When call it a children’s film, you see it as a one-dimensional, simple film,” she emphasises.
Pahuna ’s journey started 14 years ago, when the 33-year-old, an Art of Living teacher at the time visited Darjeeling and Sikkim. “It was an interesting phase as this was my first time away from a big city. The people and the place left an impact,” she shares. Pahuna is in Nepali, the prevailing language of the region and Tyrewala was determined to involve local people for the shoot in order to make it as authentic as possible. The cast comprised local artistes and talent in the technical and production department. “We took in locals so that they can start making their own films and tell their own stories. The idea was to start a film industry in a place that doesn’t have one yet,” she says. The film’s young protagonists Ishika Gurung and Amol Suba weren’t her first choice. “There was a gap of five months between the casting (she auditioned more than 100 children) and the shoot. When I returned three weeks before filming, I realised that the children I had auditioned had grown up,” says Tyrewala adding that later, when she met Ishika, she knew she had found her actor. “I had a vision in mind which even included how the girl’s hair will look. Thankfully, she had the same haircut,” she laughs.
Filming woes
Unlike Kajaal, where the cast and crew were her friends, shooting Pahuna was a challenge. The terrain was tough and several crew members were affected by altitude sickness. The unit had to travel 90 minutes by road and then walk for another 30 with the equipment to reach the location. Short daylight hours added to the problems. The young actors had no experience in facing the camera but for the director, that came as a blessing as the innocence in their faces reflected on-screen. “During initial days of filming a sequence, I remember Amol rushing through his dialogues and being in great hurry. We later learnt that his mother had asked him to share his lunch with his brother and he wanted reach on time,” reminisces Tyrewala who also sought out local writers to help her rewrite the script in Nepali, a language she isn’t familiar with.
After Pahuna’s release, the actor-director will start working on a thriller and a romantic drama. “I remember being nervous and uncomfortable when I used to face the camera. That chapter is closed,” she states. The political science graduate who debuted in Bollywood in 2002 with Yeh Kya Ho Raha Hai? and was relaunched by her husband Abbas Tyrewala in the 2011 film Jhootha Hi Sahi has no plans to return to acting as she finds “being behind the camera more exciting.” “I prefer being a storyteller than an actor,” she says.
