Conversation with filmmakers Mahesh Narayanan and Wanphrang Diengdoh ahead of IIHS’s Urban Lens film festival

Filmmakers Mahesh Narayanan and Wanphrang Diengdoh discuss the importance of geography in films

In Mahesh Narayanan’s  Malik, the sea is an integral to the film’s narrative. Through its protagonist, Ahammadali Sulaiman (played by Fahadh Faasil), a migrant, we delve into the story of the evolving relationships between the local communities in the adjacent coastal villages of Ramadapally and Edavathura. The sea forms the backdrop of friendship, romance, betrayal, and bloodshed in the gripping drama.

“All my stories come from my surroundings, not from any kind of literary work. I couldn’t have set  Malik anywhere other than a seaside village because the sea is an integral part of the conflict of that story. The place is an important part of my films,” says Mahesh.

His most recent film,  Ariyippu, is no different. It is about an immigrant Malayali couple working in a medical glove manufacturing factory in Noida. In this film, too, the importance of geography is apparent. Because we see how language, culture, terrain, and weather can alienate people. The film is also set during the peak phase of COVID-19, which made it an apt choice to open the ninth edition of IIHS’s Urban Lens film festival.

After two years of being online, the festival is back to physical screenings this year. Apart from  Ariyippu, the other films at the festival include Shaunak Sen’s Oscar-nominated documentary feature  All That Breathes, Wanphrang Diengdoh’s  Lorni - The Flaneur, Rebana Liz John’s  Ladies Only, and Aboozar Amini’s  Kabul, City in the Wind.

Explaining the choice of films for this year, Subasri Krishnan, the curator of the festival and a filmmaker herself, says, “We went for films, both fiction and nonfiction, that deal with the condition of being in a city either physically or tangentially or metaphorically. Since we live in a post-COVID-19 world, we also picked films that represented the pandemic experience in some way or the other.”

According to Subasri, city and cinema influence each other. “In  Rangeela, for instance, Aamir Khan speaks what you call the ‘Bambaiya Hindi’, which you find people speaking in real life. However, with the dialect spoken by a star on screen, it gets popular,” she says, “How the city is represented in cinema finds a way into the cultural lives of people, individually and collectively. The reason we started the festival is to see how a city has found a voice in films through different artists and filmmakers.”

Wanphrang’s  Lorni - The Flaneur, for instance, is set in Shillong. The protagonist of his film, Shem (Adil Hussain), navigates the narrow streets and dark alleys as he embarks on an emotional and mental journey reflective of his reality and that of the city.