Amateur film festival enthusiasts
Crawling back to your inbox with some indie movie recommendations
There’s no graceful way to slide back in with a Dilli Billi issue, after straight-up ghosting my five readers for four months on a fortnightly commitment. Shame her in the town square!
I met many friends and friends-of-friends who pointedly asked about it, over the months. I planned issues in my head all the time— you missed multiple imaginary essays (I’m quite a busy writer in my head!) about why I’m moving to Fort Kochi, Barbie, why I’m moving to Bangalore (a month after), intellectual laziness, three exes apologising to me in a week’s span, Taylor Swift, Fran Leibowitz, and a Mean-girls inspired Burn book on South Delhi.
Instead, we resurrect this dusty newsletter with notes (three weeks after I made them) from the most interesting thing I do annually— attending Dharamshala Film Festival 2023 as an ‘amateur film festival enthusiast’, away from dilli with my favourite billis. We spent four days of great AQI, gasping up the climb to the venue, and watching nice little movies made by talented folks.
My attention span was at an all-time low unfortunately, so I watched barely 2 films a day. My Letterboxd watchlist grew instead, by a few metres.
I’m sharing my journal from the festival days with the films I watched, and the ones I wish I had watched. I hope this bountiful offering of recommendations keeps you invested in Dilli Billis, and the non-imaginary issues I hope to put out soon after.
Disclaimer: It’s hard to do all-encompassing descriptions of complex art. I’d recommend looking up these films online to know more about their actual plot, history and birthing; my biased recollection is more about the vibes of it.
Who goes to DIFF?
For the uninitiated, the Dharamshala film festival “brings independent cinema to the mountains”, along with a crowd of mostly Bombay and Delhi billis, filling up the streets of Mcleodganj with a certain brand of festival-lanyard-wearing, tote-bag carrying indie sensibilities. You get your fair share of college kids and grizzled intellectuals in expensive athleisure, men with septum rings, Europeans in Uniqlo and hiking gear, and clean girls in combat boots.
DIFF routinely achieves great curation, and a thoughtful crowd of viewers committed to experiencing the best art the viewing balloons have to offer. Most of these films aren’t streaming anywhere or on Yify torrents, so it’s precious. Last year’s most crowded screenings were Joyland and All That Breathes, which found indie fame in the year after, and even a spot at the Oscars.
It also happens just around when Delhi’s air quality reaches dangerous levels of pollution and smog, which makes a speedy exit to the mountains all the more healthier and fun.
Day 1 - Grueling Registrations
Films watched : Against the Tide
Films missed: The Blue Caftan, Hello Guyzz (short)
Sid, Rish, Yoshi and I huffed and puffed up the hill to the venue early at 10am, feeling quite smug about being early for registrations. The joke was on us though, the line was a metre long and bristling already. The volunteers were taking too long, the sun was too bright and hot (winter layers were turning itchy and heavy). A journalist popped up and asked if she could shoot us for a reel. I always go in with my brain as smooth and opinion-less as an egg, until I get the little festival booklet with all the blurbs. Journalist girl got me at my smooth-brained worst. I hung my head in ignorance when she asked me which director I was excited about. Not a great start as a cultured billi at the festival.
I spotted the festival founder-director Tenzing (from aforementioned booklet), who we all have a giant crush on. He waltzed about in the distance, being the coolest man alive in his fabulous suit, fabulous glasses and fabulous little scarf. We mooned and considered the possibility of finally talking to him this year. What would we even say?
It didn’t happen, we hope for 2024.
By the time I got the passes and said hello to the seventy other people we knew from Delhi, the shorts had already started. I heard applause from the screening of Hello Guyzz, and kicked myself for getting coffee instead. Meanwhile, the queue was already forming at the venue for Against the Tide’s screening, which was all the way up another hill. I ran.
The documentary shows the lives of two Bombay fishermen brothers and how they deal with their work in the face of climate change and technology—the works. It won stuff at Sundance, and is a thought-provoking, a-little-melancholy watch. I sat on the floor in front of the screen, drank it all in and remembered why I love stories. People laughed and clapped at the wives’ funny asides. When documentaries point to inevitably sad conclusions, the audience is even hungrier for morsels of joy and humour. This one provided that in plenty. Along with gorgeous shots of the sea, fishing nets, infant ceremonies and storms.
The Blue Caftan was up next, but I was tired already. I was ready to retire and eat momos. As I crawled back up the hill, a girl rushed to me and whispered that my dress had ridden up and my butt was out in the open. Things like that just makes you give up on posing as cultured and invested in the arts. I called it a day.
Day 2 - Sid gets sympathy PMS
Films watched: Guras, The World is Family
Films missed: Perfect Days
I was ambitious for Day 2, and had a list ready. Sid wanted to catch the mythical festival shuttle bus at 9:40 am, which I was not equipped for after gaining consciousness at 9am. I had an outfit to put together, plus my period was peaking in cruelty. We fought about how I’m never on time. I treat time as a suggestion on when to get somewhere, whereas Sid (like a lot of straight men) sees it as a commandment. We made it barely in time for Guras, bickering all the way.
Guras is a Nepali film about a little girl who’s dog Tinkle goes missing, so she skips school and hunts all over the villages for him. There is the depressing B plot of cardamom prices dropping and her farmer parents struggling because of it. It was one of those metaphysical, layered films that you can see great depth in, but unfortunately can’t access in a rushed festival viewing. The tone shifts between deep hopefulness and pessimism, and the ending didn’t help with the period-y sadness that was setting in.
Sid and I made up and decided to indulge on lunch at a very cute Korean cafe back in Mcleodganj. He confessed to feeling moody too. I said it sounded like Winston’s sympathy PMS in New Girl. We trekked back for the big Anand Patwardhan screening at 4. The lines wrapped all the way down the hill.
The World is Family was for me, the outstanding watch of the festival. I cried a lot. As a intimate story of the filmmaker’s aging parents and their histories, alongside the nation’s histories, I couldn’t get over the vulnerability of it. How can you possibly show and give so much of your innermost experiences to the world? The Q&A session predictably had everyone asking Patwardhan the same. Someone had to audacity to ask if his mother wanted him to be there as a son instead of a filmmaker in those hospital scenes. I cringed into a wrinkle in my seat.
It was also a decisive political stance, with the session touching on the importance of the upcoming election, why activism matters, Palestine and how Gandhi always opposed the Zionist idea of Israel. I added the rest of his films to my watchlist instantly.
The queue was forming for Perfect Days, but I was drained by one spectacular film already. I later heard that it was yet another extraordinary watch— deceptively wholesome on the surface and deeply existential at it’s core. So that’s another one for the watchlist.
Day 3 - Three films a day
Films watched - Bawa’s Garden, Kummatty, The New Boy
Films missed - The Buriti Flower, While We Watched
By now, Sid and I had realized that harmony lay in separate morning schedules. Boys can spring out of bed into a full outfit in mere seconds, like a cartoon character. Meanwhile I had an an optical illusion to build, using clothes and makeup to be perceived as I wanted to be perceived that day.
So Sid went off gleefully early to get a croissant, before catching the documentary on Ravish Kumar. Unfortunately, some Delhi guy sat down next to him at the cafe, and got on a long obnoxious call about ranking the “hot chicks of DIFF”. It wasn’t even 9 am yet. He went on for 10 unbearable minutes, teaching Sid a nice lesson on what punctuality gets you. He wasn’t in the best mood when we met for Bawa’s Garden.
Bawa’s Garden is the kind of meditative, exquisitely-framed film that’s perfect for 10 am on an anxious Monday morning, I was lulled by it. It’s made by an ex-architect in search of the famed Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa’s mythical garden Lunuganga. I don’t know much about architecture, but it’s always wonderful to learn about great art, whatever medium it may be. Folks were talking about how maybe the filmmaker inserted herself a bit too much into it, but I didn’t care. Also, time to rush to the next screening up on the hill!
I sat on the floor in the hot tent for Kummatty, the restored 1979 Malayalam children’s movie that even my mother didn’t know about. It’s about a folklorish bogeyman who sings and plays with children. He turns them all into animals as a game, but one boy runs away and remains a dog for a year. Kummatty delivered on the hype, with incredible songs, lovely landscapes and magical realism. It also features the best dog actor witnessed at DIFF, he deserves an IMDb page.
Also, there’s nothing like watching a fancy little film festival crowd listening intently to old dialogue in my mother tongue.
I’d highly recommend watching Kummatty, you can find the restored version on Youtube. Martin Scorsese recommends it too, if it makes a difference.
Rish and Yoshi emerged from watching the The Buriti Flower, an overlapping feature that was also a striking, cyclical narrative of an indigenous community’s battle with land encroachment.
We decided that we had it in us for one more film, especially because it featured Mother Cate Blanchett.
By the time The New Boy began, I was tiring of this film festival. It was getting dark and cold, the girl sitting behind kept bugging me to not move my head and block her specific line of sight, despite the entire row next to her being empty. Yet another movie with luminous landscapes, this one had the most adorable child I’ve seen in ages, and Mother Cate as a nun trying to colonialize him. It was unnerving and deeply sad. Lots of provocative commentary on how insane Christianity’s rituals are, and how white people ruin everything.
On the way back to our hotel, the cabbie asked us what we’ve been doing all day locked indoors. When we told him about the sad films we watched, he laughed and called us insane. Were there any action films? After three depressing films a day, how did any of us have the will to live? We just laughed with him.
Day 4 - Jai Bhim!
Films watched: Dr. B.R. Ambedkar: Now and Then
Films missed: Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom, Frybread Face and Me
Just like the exhaustion you’re feeling right now with this long read, we were also done by the last day. I gave up on my ambition, and just focused on making it to the Ambedkar film for the day. I lazily got there after lunch, and got in line, watching the director talk to everyone excitedly. I liked her, and hoped for the doc to be good. It didn’t disappoint, and was a rousing take on contemporary caste, media and Ambedkar in India. The stories and the statistics covered weren’t exactly new, but incredibly hard-hitting to watch in one go.
Then it was time for a last look at the maypole in the middle, and at fabulous Tenzing and his hot crew. We left soon after, to pack for Dharamkot and a god-awfully-long trek on Wednesday.
Afterparty
The days after in Dharamkot were comfortably uneventful. I did a 6 km trek, whining and crying all the way. My toenails haven’t recovered still. I now have a trigger-response to the phrase “We’re almost there”.
On the last day of our healthy-AQI trip, we walked to a cafe on the trek route. I had my festival tote, and one of the aforementioned grizzled men carrying a puppy greeted us. “You DIFF people are everywhere. Did you go to the afterparty?”
Clearly, we weren’t important enough to be invited.
I got a ginger-honey-lemon tea and sat down on a ledge, settling in for some languid eavesdropping. On the ledge below, a woman was talking animatedly about Tibetan diaspora and it’s political weakening. Behind me, Afterparty uncle was talking in a posh British accent to a girl with dreadlocks. I caught snippets— “protest at Piccadilly”, “cops fighting us”, “riot gear”, “Boris Johnson’s brother’s party”. I decided that he must be another international intellectual slash activist, and tuned out.
A few minutes later, Sid came down to sit next to me.
“That man’s fucked”, he said.
Ya, I heard about his British activism stuff, I said.
“He’s no activist, he’s an anti-vaxxer. He was protesting to not wear masks during Covid, he doesn’t think it’s real.”
That stopped me from feeling bad about the afterparty.
As we were leaving, Afterparty uncle struck up a conversation with us, as old men often do. He asked us when we were going back, and I said we were from Delhi. He advised us to use HEPA filter pollution masks only, the others apparently don’t work against carbon particles. His beautiful dog had just given birth, and he was staying up all night with the nine puppies. He found the festival’s films too depressing this time, and didn’t watch a lot. We said we’ll be back next year for DIFF, if not earlier to the mountains.
He was quite lovely, especially during the goodbyes. “Take care darlings! Have a safe journey home, hope to see you again at DIFF next year!”
Augh so good I want to be there next year. Also I know koval who made against the tide :)