‘Every film we do is a reflection of our personal stories’

Pooja: Attending film festivals has been a great way of experiencing mind-blowing films that made us understand the power of story-telling. You get to meet wonderful people and your horizon and worldviews get expanded.

We honestly live in a bubble, and there are times when we need to come out of it. For filmmakers, film festivals are such events, as it helps us to be humble and stay guarded as well.

Can you briefly tell us about what your upcoming The Whole Timers is about?

But thanks to the company of some friends, we understood the value of cameras. Cinema is not just about writing. At the end of the day, it’s a visual medium, and you need to understand the nitty-gritties of camera work. I feel that it’s okay for a director to not know everything about writing, but if you don’t know how the camera works and how to handle it, then you miss a lot.

It’s through the medium of cinematography that you set the tone of the film, it’s pacing, mood and build the world you want to show. That’s why we like to experiment with cinematography. For instance, in our latest short film The Big-Headed Boy, we have experimented by using an 8mm film, even when it’s old and difficult. However, as filmmakers, we believe in challenging ourselves and experimenting with various mediums.

The Nepali film industry is going into two polar opposite directions. There’s the ‘mainstream’ cinema earning the big bucks and there is an independent cinema, which is limited within a group. Why do you think we haven’t found the right balance?

Pooja: We don’t give priority to making films based on our roots and stories that are original to us. Most of our movies, especially commercial movies, are doing nothing, except aping. There’s no effort to tell genuine and rooted stories, which happened during the Golden Age of television in Nepal.

We still haven’t made a good love story or a horror story. I believe it has to do with the fact that we have normalised mediocrity as people hardly express their dissatisfactions. I strongly feel we need to speak the truth and say things that we don’t agree or like about movies.

Likewise, we, the filmmakers of the current generation, shouldn’t give up. There will always be difficult days. But that doesn’t mean we give up. We have to work and strive continuously for the betterment of movies. That’s what South Korean filmmakers did and look at the quality of South Korean cinema now.

Even after achieving so much, you guys are mostly low-key. Why so?

Pooja: It’s a mutual and conscious decision we took for our mental well-being and sanity. As filmmakers, we like entertaining our inner voices more. There are many voices insides us which we want to focus on more. That’s why we have shifted from film circles and for us, it has been a good choice.

Making cinema in itself is a herculean task. Then, there is a lack of appreciation and film culture in Nepal. Surely, that must be demotivating at times. What then drives you to show up to work?

Bibhusan: For us, we don’t have any option except making movies. Our lives revolved around movies. We don’t know what fuels or drives us, but movies are everything for us.

When we had to stop our shoot for The Whole Timers due to the lockdown, it was a sad experience for us, as we had given five years of our lives to the movie and when we had finally started shooting we had to stop.

But we didn’t let the experience affect us. We instead resumed our work by editing the clips of the feature as well as our latest short movie, The Big-Headed Boy.

Pooja: We don’t make movies just to sustain ourselves. It’s part of us. Our movies are not just us depicting our inspirations, stories, and experiences. We are also depicting the stories of the people we interviewed and met during our filmmaking process, who opened up to us and shared their dreams and experiences. That’s why every morning we wake up, we feel charged to fulfil our responsibility of telling the stories of people and us through our movies.