It’s a good year for Indian female filmmakers who have been conquering international film festivals since Sundance with their original choice of topics, excellent scriptwriting and sure-handed directing. One of the most interesting titles in the Proxima Competition of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival that has wrapped a couple of days ago, was Subhadra Mahajan‘s black & white drama “Second Chance” about bonding between two women of different origins and upbringing, brought together by chance in a small village in the snowy Himalayas.
AMP met the director accompanied by her lead actress Dheera Johnson in Karlovy Vary, one day after the official world premiere of the movie to speak about her inspiration for the script, the impressive setting and her decision to work with non-actors.
“Second Chance” is your first feature that now competes in the prestigious Proxima Programme of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
The world premiere happened yesterday. Right now, I’m still very overwhelmed. The reaction that we had to the film yesterday was fantastic. Our title comes at the end of the film, and as it rolled, there was complete silence. As soon as the credits started, there was a round of applause, which started at the beginning of the credits and went all the way to the end. So that’s more than three minutes. And then the lights came on, and I was sitting upstairs on the balcony, I looked at the audience, and they all turned to us, applauding. And some of the ladies there had tears in their eyes, they were crying.
DJ: Yeah, it was powerful, overwhelming.
How did you find Dheera?
I have known her for several years. We are family friends. We were brought up in the same area, and I had been seeing her over the years. She was a teacher at that time in a school for small children. One day, I went to see the school and I saw her on stage. She was dancing and teaching the small children how to do it. I saw her energy and I was like, wow. She is a very warm person, which is why we became friends and all of that. And then, a few years later, some of our common friends did this YouTube vlog called Soul Trails. Dheera was one of the people featured in the vlog. They were travelling around and talking about what they saw and experienced. That was the first time I saw her on camera and I thought the camera loved her. She has such a presence, and her character is so strong. Around that time I was formulating this idea for my first feature film in my head, and my protagonist was a young woman of Dheera’s age. Something clicked in my head, and I thought “yap, that’s her”.
Check the review of the film
Looking at the core of the plot, one question surrounding abortion arises – how difficult is it to end pregnancy in India?
There are two sides to it. Legally, we can proudly say that India has one of the most forward abortion laws in the world since 1971, as defined in the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act. It was recently amended to be even more liberal. So a woman doesn’t need permission from someone to do it. She can go to a clinic and get an abortion. She can be single. She can be married. She only needs the consent of a doctor for medical reasons. So it’s a very liberal law, and you can get it done up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. And if you have a good reason to pull it off after the official term, you can appeal in court and get the approval. That’s the legal side of things.
Now, socially, it’s a completely different picture because abortion in India is a huge social taboo. It’s considered a big shame for a woman to have an abortion. And the reason behind this is that we live in a very patriarchal and conservative society. It is never spoken openly about sex. I know it from my own experience. Also, premarital sex is considered to be nonexistent, but come on, we all know that it exists. So people don’t have sexual education.
People don’t even know the basics about contraception. So, when a woman ends up pregnant and she’s not married and doesn’t want to keep the child, more often than not, even though legally she can have an abortion, she does it in a top-secret manner, under dangerous conditions. It is exactly what you see happening to Nia in “Second Chance”.
Some scenes, like the one in the bathtub, are hair-raising.
A lot of women told me that they just froze when they saw it.
Let’s go back to something that you mentioned – about many things still considered taboo in India. How difficult was it to finance the movie, to find a brave producer, with a feeling for the topic and supportive of your idea?
I was lucky because I found a producer very early on in the project. His name is Shyam Bora. He’s not here right now because his visa got rejected. We are sad that he’s not here, because he’s been with me since the inception of the project. So I had this idea about a girl who is going through something and decides to go to the mountain. And I told him how I wanted the film in black and white and all roles to be played by non-actors. For a producer, it was all the wrong things, but he bit it, and he loved it. He told me: “Let’s do it” and urged me to make a list of things I needed. We started working on it together.
So I had a very passionate producer, but as much as we tried, we couldn’t raise any funding for the film because, especially in India, nobody wants to put their money in a black-and-white film with non-actors and with a female protagonist with such an internal journey. It isn’t a very plot-driven film. It’s more of a character-driven one. So, we just went ahead and shot it on a shoestring budget. We had minimal resources consisting of personal savings and many favors from everybody in the crew and our family members. And we had a very, very short shooting period. It was officially 30 days, but we had just 12 people on set, plus three actors and three drivers. That’s it. We all stayed in one cottage. And somehow we made the film. Everybody was doing everything. So I didn’t have a budget for costume, hair, and makeup. We did it all ourselves using Dheera’s wardrobe. Sunny had on what he usually wears, a knitted sweater or something bought locally. It was like that.
What is your connection to that particular village?
I was born and raised in that particular state, although in a different part of it. Himachal Pradesh has about four or five different valleys, and I spent a lot of time in my childhood in one of them. I felt a deep connection there, and the valley had, for many reasons, a special place in my heart. So when I thought of the story of a young woman’s journey of healing, I knew there was no better place to set it than in this valley, because of the power of nature and the culture, because the people over there are warm and special. I don’t even know how to put it in words.
I read about your cast of non-professional actors, who are all impressive on screen. Can you tell us how you found them?
They are natural, and you have no feeling they are acting because they are just being themselves. I decided on non-actors because I know the area very well. I knew I that wouldn’t be able to get professional actors and make them act like this. Even physicality plays a huge role. You see the lines on the old woman’s face, the way she works with her hands, missing teeth…. An actor could not look like that without heavy makeup. For a foreign viewer, this isn’t something you notice but the dialect in which they speak, the way they talk, the intonation, all of it would be super difficult to find through a proper cast. That is why I decided to take the risk of giving big parts to non-actors.
I went around the village and looked at many, many, old ladies, and many little boys. And when I finally found people that I was looking for, I spent a lot of time with them. First, I had to convince them to be part of the film. I had to convince their families. Then I spent time with them. When I was working on the script’s final draft, I included their character traits in it to make it a bit easier for them.
Dheera, in one scene in which Bhemi and you are walking up the mountain, you ask her how she does it. She delivers a touching speech about the life of a mountain woman, which is probably the most feminist monologue in the movie. And you can feel that she means every word.
Everything she says comes from her experience. When I worked as a school teacher for village children, a lot of parents would send their sons to our school because it was nice. The boys would come and stay, and the girls would be sent to a fee-free school that didn’t offer a good education after a while. The logic behind it is that a girl doesn’t need to be educated. She will get married and have babies. Why does she need That’s unfortunately the way it goes.
Not just the role of Nia but also all others are well developed. Two women from two different worlds bond over a painful event. How personal was it to write about it?
The central character is inspired by a particular generation of young Indian women of a fairly privileged background. I observed people around me, and even though we had everything: money, education, and support coming from our families, there was always this pressure to do something to make money. If you happen to be more artistic, that is never appreciated, and you’re always pushed to do something related to business. it’s a bit of a heartless life. That’s where the character inspiration of Nia came from. I have to return to the question of patriarchy and say that when there’s a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship and the girl ends up pregnant more often than not, the boyfriend disappears because he’s petrified of what’s going to happen, and what people are going to say. So, the girl ends up having to deal with it alone. In thesocial context, she’s in a place where she can’t tell her family or friends because it’s such a huge shame and a huge taboo. In the end, a woman is left all alone to deal with the emotion, physicality and trauma of having to terminate a pregnancy.
Let’s face it, women have different reactions to pregnancy, it is not the same for everyone. For somebody like Nia who likes kids, this comes as a particularly difficult choice. She’s dealing with the physical stress because of the pills that didn’t work. She’s bleeding heavily, and there’s the additional emotional- and social stress.
Dheera, what did you think of the script when you read it for the first time?
To be honest, when Subhadra sent me the first draft I immediately loved it. I was excited that we were going to make a movie about something like that. I did feel for the characters and the way the role was written. It was very relatable for me as well in terms of, as Subhadra was saying, the demographics. It’s not like people are telling you directly not to do art, but there’s not much respect for that path. So it’s like you get pushed into what you think you’re supposed to do as opposed to what you want to do. The family would tell you to take the money and start some cool business venture. Even if you don’t feel like doing it, you have to. In that sense, I was happy to be given this opportunity.
SM: All Dheera really wanted to do was to dance and to act. And it took her some time to get there. And, what I wanted to do was make films like “Second Chance”.
How do you see the current situation of the arthouse cinema in India? Do you see any shift in the audience in terms that people get more attracted by new things?
So far, 2024 has been a tremendous year for our cinema because we had the first Indian film, Payal Kapadia‘s “All We Imagine As Light” to compete in the main competition of Cannes Film Festival since 1994. Not only that, it won the Grand Prix. Before that, Shuchi Talat’s “Girls Will Be Girls” took two awards at Sundance, before bagging the ARTE Prize at the Berlinale. So this year is great for Indian women in film. I am very optimistic and I feel like we are finally getting appreciated at festivals around the world. I think there is still a long way to go within the country because generally, our audience is quite Bollywood-obsessed. People want the big stars and the same type of Masala films, as we call them. My hope is, this will change with time.
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What do you hope to achieve with your film back home?
I want people to watch it and feel they are not alone. Even if something bad has happened in your life, or is carrying on right now, it’s okay. The bad times will pass, and something funny will happen like a little boy who will make you laugh. Maybe you will just find an old lady who’s going to hold your hand and say that everything is ok, and life will carry on. I mean, life is full of second chances.
How long did it take you to shoot the film? And what were the conditions like?
We shot for 35 days. It was in the dead of winter in a very remote area up in the Pir Panjar Range of the Western Himalayas, meaning that the conditions were very harsh. Our coldest morning on set was minus 20 degrees Celsius. Our highest altitude was over 10,000 feet or, I think, 3,000 meters. Dheera and I were born there, so we were still okay. A lot of people had breathing problems and problems with the cold. Two days after we started shooting, both Dheera and I, but also our DoP got Covid. We had to shut the set for 10 days to recover. And it was very difficult to recoup when it’s so cold and already there are all these circumstances. But somehow, everything fell in place and we were aligned, the stars were aligned, and we managed to get back to the shooting. It was very, very tough. And everybody had to do multiple jobs. I had just one assistant director who was doing so many things. We just had two two-person camera teams. That’s it. One guy for sound. The production team also consisted of only two people. We had a local guy called Karan whom we called Sabhkuch, which in Indian means someone who does everything. He was one department: camera assistant, assistant director, and production assistant, but he was also helping the actors. He was everything.
I’m also hoping for a good festival run. I want to see how people react in different parts of the world because everybody has a different cultural and social context.
This question goes to Dheera. What was your reaction when you saw the film for the first time?
I saw its final version last night, here in Karlovy Vary. I watched a rough cut earlier, but then I went to study abroad.
SM: There’s an interesting story if I am allowed to cut in for a minute. Dheera was not an actor, and I made her act in the film, after which she decided to concentrate on that.
DJ: So, I moved to Bombay and I ended up doing a play there. This is all thanks to Subadr who told me about workshops organized by the Lee Strasberg Theater and the Film Institute in Los Angeles. She was convinced that I would enjoy it, and one day before the deadline I sent in my application. I got into the workshop, and at the end of it they offered me a full scholarship in Los Angeles.
Would you like to add something about “Second Chance”?
We have two different Indias, right? We have the urban, modern, fast-paced, unforgiving India, with cities like in any other part of the world. That’s the world that Nia comes from, which everybody can relate to. And then there is the mountain life, the timeless rustic Himalayas, which have a pace- and a a philosophy of their own. I feel like this film unites two very different worlds, and they both give and take from each other and come out rejuvenated and refreshed with the idea of a second chance. That was my intention, and I hope I was able to fulfil it.
I’m very excited to go back to the village and do a screening for the actors. And I’m so excited to see their reactions because Bhemi is very wise. She can’t read or write, and the dialogue was very difficult for her, but you’ll never guess it when you see the film. She won’t say much, but she’ll say something that’s going to be so exact. And Sunny, who is now 10 years old and the naughtiest boy in the village, is already a star. The old man is the wise old man of the mountains. That’s what he is. And he embodies this philosophy, this indigenous genius nomadic culture for us. And seeing his reaction, because he’s probably never watched a film in his life, will be special. He’s going to see himself on screen talking about things that occupy his mind. I wrote the dialogues based on lengthy interviews I had with him about the state of the mountains and his work and how he feels about the current state of things. it’s going to be incredible to see their reaction.
So, what he says in the film are his genuine thoughts on climate change?
Absolutely. He belongs to this tribe of nomadic shepherds. They’re known as Gaddi in different parts of the mountains. And he’s just very distraught like the rest of his community because he can see such a drastic impact of climate change on his day-to-day life. Temperatures are going up and down. When it’s winter, it’s hot. When it’s summer, it’s snowing. And we’ve had a lot of development in the mountains where they’re just drilling tunnels and building dams and displacing the entire environment. We have herbs and plants that are going extinct, and the sheep can’t survive. And that is his livelihood. There’s also a spiritual angle to it because in our indigenous culture, predating Hinduism, there’s a lot of nature worship. We worship the mountains and the rivers and plants. Right now, we observe nature being devastated by machinery which has a very bad spiritual impact. Do you remember the story of the Goddess Drifti Devi? She’s a rock in the film. It’s nature worship. So there’s a huge connection with nature, and climate change is just cutting it like a knife right now
