Anu, a short film by director Pulkit Arora whose previous debut short Milk Toffee (2021) was selected for the Tribeca Film Festival, bagged the Audience Award and the Creative NZ Emerging Talent Award at the New Zealand International Film Festival this year. The short, which is Pulkit’s first in New Zealand, has also been selected in competition at the 2023 Melbourne International Film Festival.
The film is a poignant story of a middle-aged woman coping with the loss of her husband during the Covid-19 induced pandemic. Starring Prabha Ravi as the eponymous Anu, it shows how she deals with grief while being quarantined in a hotel room after landing in New Zealand.
We spoke to Prabha on how she got the role, doing a film after almost forty years and how she balanced shooting while campaigning for an election. Excerpts:
How did Anu happen?
I saw this advertisement for an audition call in a newspaper here in New Zealand. I registered for it and was contacted by the director (Pulkit Arora). I am based in Wellington and he lives in Auckland but he was flying here for some screen tests. I auditioned for the part and bagged the role.
You aren’t a professional actor. Were you apprehensive about facing the camera for Anu?
I am actually not shy in front of the camera (laughs). Although the only film role I did was in a musical back in 1982 when I was 11, I have been a judge at this reality show called The Great New Zealand Dance Masala.
Anu might hit home for a lot of people since it is about a woman dealing with her husband’s loss while being caged in a hotel room, quarantined due to the Covid-19 pandemic. How was the lockdown for you?
I didn’t experience quarantine personally but Pulkit (the director) was in it for two weeks. That inspired him to write the script of the film. Some of my very close friends and relatives in New Zealand contacted Covid-19 and were in quarantine. They said, at times, it felt like jail. Their food was delivered at the door of their hotel room, as we have shown in the film. Even if they had to go to the lobby, there was a dedicated space for them to walk. All this was in my head when I was playing the role of Anu. How painful it would have been for her to be unable to do her deceased husband’s Pind Daan (a Hindu cremation ritual).
There are some really-hard hitting scenes in the film. Like the one where Anu has breakfast every morning, with her husband’s coat draped around a chair opposite her or when she listens to his voice notes over and over. How did you approach these scenes?
What was important for me is to not overthink it. I just took the scene and tried to be in that moment. Imbibe it. Pulkit was very clear. He told me not to over-dramatise it. Before shooting, he actually prepared me. He talked to me about how I would feel if confronted with so much sadness? How would I have reacted if I was in a similar situation? Anu needed to be grieving yet determined to do her husband’s pind-daan herself. I needed to strike that balance.
Is it tough to shoot such emotionally-harrowing scenes?
What was actually difficult was getting into the skin of the character while having other commitments. We shot last September and at that time I was campaigning for getting elected in the local council here in Wellington. It was just a week before the voting and I had to shoot in a different city. The film is such a sad story and here I was replying to messages, in-between takes, engaging with my electorate and being jubilant. And in the next moment, Pulkit would call me to delve deep into sadness in order to enact the scene. This push and pull of emotions was really exhausting.
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