Chennai-based Indie filmmaker Vijay Jayapal’s Nirvana Inn recently premiered at the Busan International Film Festival. The Hindi-Assamese psychological thriller that has gained quite a response from the festival circuit audience stars Adil Hussain, Rajshri Deshpande and Sandhya Mridul in lead roles. Produced by Stray Factory, Nirvana Inn is an intense drama that follows a man coming to terms with his past.
The film’s idea, the director has shared in previous interviews, came when he chanced upon a newspaper report of the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash in which the pilot went on a suicidal mission, killing everyone on board.
Adil Hussain plays Jogiraj Chakraborty, a boatman and Bhaona dancer who takes up employment at a mountain resort. Vijay had originally planned to set the film in Kerala with the protagonist playing a Kathakali dancer. Yet, as someone who loves charting a course as the water flows, Vijay chose Manali and Majuli to shoot Nirvana Inn.
Rajshri Deshpande whose role in Pan Nalin's Angry Indian Goddesses gained her international repute, plays the mysterious woman in this film. Actor Sandhya Mridul plays a filmmaker working on her next script at the resort. The film intensely captures Jogi’s descent into paranoia as he finds the characters from his past haunting his present. The film’s title has a metaphorical connection to its story, with the inn becoming a ground for Jogi’s redemption.
Nirvana Inn was mostly shot in Manali and Majuli, in zero degree temperatures and amidst landslides between October 2018 and January this year. Having been selected by Busan’s Asian Project Market, Nirvana Inn’s post production was done with Asian Cinema Fund from the Busan Film Festival.
Mathivanan, Stray Factory’s founder, shares that the coming together of the team was quite by chance. “We were initially looking at Vijay's other film The Displaced but he suddenly shared an idea that he had for a horror/thriller. I was particularly excited because his first film Revelations was more of a slowburn drama and I was interested in how he was going to bring elements of art house and genre together,” he reveals, adding, “There has been a global change in how horror is being used now with The Witch, Midsommar, Get Out etc. There was one scene which Vijay described, which was with the disturbed protagonist in the middle of the forest performing a masked dance, and hearing that, I was sold on the world he was going to create.”
Vijay, who is now in Chennai, is already back at work, drafting his next film The Displaced. “It's another story about outsiders trying to cope with the struggles of life in an alien city. It will be very different from my first two films. It will be like a crime, romantic, musical drama with some strong socio-political subtext. We will soon start raising money for the film and hopefully we can shoot it sometime next year,” he says.
The team is overwhelmed by the response from Busan which saw sold-out screenings. “We had a 40 minute Q&A, where the audience was grilling me with a lot of very deep and interesting questions about the film. It was fun,” Vijay says. The challenges of being an indie filmmaker are the same worldover, he observes. “Indie filmmaking nowadays is a challenge everywhere, not just south India. Even globally, because of various factors including lack of financing, lack of proper distribution and exhibition model, and the overpowering grip of commercial cinema over art,” he explains.
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“In south India, especially Tamil, there's never been a space for parallel/art house/independent cinema. As a result, most times I feel as if I'm waging a lonely battle, as nobody gives a damn about me or what I'm doing. There are only a handful of filmmakers in Tamil, who really do this kind of cinema and I'm sure they will also be feeling the same,” he further adds.
Vijay is also unmindful of languages and landscapes as long as it works for the story. His Revelations was shot in Kolkata and Nirvana Inn in Manali and Majuli.
Nirvana Inn has well-crafted spooky elements that give us a feeling of not being in control early on. Jogi is alone in a new place and is barely able to sleep at nights. He’s surrounded by phantoms from his past who sometimes appear like visions, to keep him company and as the film progresses, we begin to question if it's all real of if it's just in Jogi’s head.
The director, who considers himself a stranger in his own city (Chennai) believes that it is this feeling (of being a stranger) that draws him to write such characters and create such landscapes.
“There are so many things that I really love about Chennai, yet there are so many other things that make me feel really disconnected too. That's why I have always had this strange feeling of being an outsider in my own city and that's what draws me to all these stories about outsiders and strangers and their lives in an alien city,” he shares.
And this subject of being alien and the loneliness that comes with it is a central theme used in both his films. “I’m a lonely man myself and that's also one of the main reasons why I'm really drawn to this theme. I think loneliness, at some level, is actually a disease that can affect a person both physically and psychologically. I read somewhere that a lot of psychopaths have been very lonely people. So in a way, loneliness has the potency to not just impact individuals, but also create havoc and chaos in the society in general,” he reveals.
In most interviews, Vijay has said that Nirvana Inn is Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep meets The Shining. What are the risks of a thriller losing its steam when it seems inspired by other well-known works? But Vijay does not look at it as a challenge. “I don't see Nirvana Inn as a regular thriller. It's more of a psychological drama with elements of horror and mystery thriller. Also, Winter Sleep and The Shining were just inspirations in terms of treatment and aesthetics. The story and narrative of my film have nothing do with those films. So I guess there shouldn't be a problem!” he says.
Vijay Jayapal
Nirvana Inn team at Busan
Speaking about the challenges of producing an indie film, Mathi says, “The financing of the film in itself was unique since we were able to partner with a set of producers, first it was Uncombed Buddha from Jabalpur who took a keen interest in the script. Following which it was Stop Whinging from Australia, oddly enough that connection happened through Facebook after having watched Vijay’s previous film. The final piece was brought in by a startup investor from Tamil Nadu called Harman Ventures,” he explains.
Mathi calls the ACF post production fund a “crowning achievement” for the film. “We were one of two non Korean films chosen from hundreds of projects and this was a testament to the film that was made. It enabled us to invest more in the sound design and grade in Seoul. The studio where the grading happened was also where big films like Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho) had their pos production,” he adds.
On the indie-filmmaking scene in the state itself, Mathi shares that he’s positive of a change in the offing. “We make over 300 films from Tamil Nadu a year, a handful make it to the theatre, a smaller amount make money and extremely few get to make the movie they wanted. We've only scratched the surface of independent filmmaking. For producers and distributors, the scene is very nascent. I believe there is an insane potential for innovation here, alternate financing models, independent theatres, hyper local festivals, international co-productions, adaptation of Tamil literature, innovative development deals and so much more!”