Pan Nalin on Chhello Show India’s official entry for the 95th Academy Awards: I have made a very honest & organic story

As the Oscar campaign is heating up, filmmaker Nalin Kumar Pandya’s (known in film circles as Pan Nalin) expectations are rising. He is confident about his Gujarati film Chhello Show (The Last Film Show) that has been selected by the Film Federation of India (FFI) as India’s official entry for the 95th Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film Category, over popular favourites such as RRR and The Kashmir Files. Nalin’s confidence stems from the fact that the film has won many awards, including Audience awards at a plethora of festivals worldwide. Chhello Show premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival 2021, won the Golden Spike award at the Valladolid International Film Festival in Spain, and received attention in several other festivals, including the Mill Valley Film Festival in California, the U.S., where some of the Academy members saw the film. The film that got a standing ovation at several screenings, is scheduled to release in India on October 14.

The director’s “love letter” to celluloid, Chhello Show’s story draws from Nalin’s childhood. It is a coming-of-age drama that focuses on a young boy’s fascination with films and filmmaking. The plot basically finds a nine-year-old working out a deal with a local cinema hall’s projector technician, allowing him to be engrossed with one movie or the other. The demand for the film’s release has been growing by the day and currently, it is playing in Spain, Germany, Finland and Singapore among other countries. Nalin, who is recognised for his films Samsara, Valley of Flowers and Angry Indian Goddesses, opens up on the semi-autobiographical drama and process and lobbying required to be in the race for Oscars. Excerpts from the chat:

Your film was selected over RRR and The Kashmir Files, why do you think Chhello Show was the unanimous choice of 17 FFI jury members? What could have tugged the heartstrings of the jury members?

Honestly speaking, please ask this to 17 jury members, I am also dying to know what happened in that room (laughs heartily). But somewhere I am not surprised because people gave us awards at many festivals; Bhavin our little young star was given the Best Actor award. We got nominations even in China, Argentina … so I knew this would speak to the jury. An innocent story that makes people laugh, cry and they find it entertaining, is good cinema. So I am sure some of these qualities must have touched them because I have made a very honest, organic story. I realised post-pandemic that there will be fatigue of VFX, fatigue of manufactured emotions and produced passion, we have been taught how to create package entertainment. I realised that the audience has become smarter than filmmakers and they will appreciate honesty which we will try to portray. It was a big decision at the making level itself that in the world of streaming, studio and star an honest story will touch hearts but the only question would be how we get it to the audience. If we win that obstacle …so the proof will be on 14th October when the film comes out.

What is the origin of Chhello… The Last Film Show? You have said it is semi-autobiographical ..

Yes, it is inspired from my childhood, not just that, I shot where I grew up. So you will also see my school, the same train which I took as a kid and even the cinema hall which was closed for 25 years where I had seen my first film. In 2011, when I went to meet my parents in my hometown in Kathiawar, my father said you should go and see your friend Mohammad bhai, a projection operator who I had known as a child. We used to swap lunch boxes and the theatre where he worked is where I got interested in cinema. I had not seen him in years and I was told he was in bad shape. Mohammad bhai had lost his job because now there are digital projectors and he didn’t know how to read and write or operate computers. He was emotionally moved because the projection room is their home as from morning to night till one am he would spend time there. The projection rooms earlier had a little temple and food area as well.

When we were kids, my sister used to always complain about the mirrors going missing in the house because I had to use those to create a projection system. Few times the white sari disappeared but the worst was when the cops came when some of us kids stole the print from the railway parcel room. So suddenly the story of digital arriving started gaining ground. I realised that in 2021-22 it will be one decade of the disappearance of films and one can do something but not a nostalgic kind of a film because I love embracing changes. I started putting all those anecdotes together and wrote the script and went around India and abroad to find finance.

When did the magic happen? What changed the fate of the film?

Along with Dheer Momaya who is my producing partner, we started mounting the project but the moment we finished filming we went into pandemic and it took a long time for us to edit, mix …But we knew that since the film celebrates cinema we will not go for virtual festival or virtual market. We waited and we were in talks with many festivals like Cannes, Busan.. Soon after, Tribeca film festival organisers saw the movie and agreed to give us the red carpet, the opening. They loved the film so much that they were bending the rules because earlier a non-American movie had never been the opening film of spotlight. Then one of the big changes came when BBC World News carried an exclusive story after the world premiere which generated a lot of interest in the film among people.

After the end of the festival, we got the Audience award runner-up prize and that is when the distributors got interested. Tribeca Festival has people who actually pay ticket to watch movies and New York being multi-ethnic city they could see that there were audience of all kind – people of Asian origin, Indian origin, lot of Americans…so for distributors it was like a test that if these 450 people loved the movie and voted for it then it might work everywhere. Then the film won the Golden Spike award at the Valladolid International Film Festival in Spain. The last Indian film to win this award was Mrinal Sen’s Kharij (The Case Is Closed), in 1983.

But all this while our concern was how do we release the film in India. How do we find people and exhibitors to believe and that belief within certain groups started growing. There was a Gujarati film festival in Atlanta mid this year and 600 people there discovered this new film and they gave us the Best Gujarati film award. People started talking about it and someone had seen it in Spain, it was also playing in Taiwan. Gujarati film in Taiwan was unheard of. This was followed up by the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF) and the film was screened in London, Birmingham and Manchester with about 50 per cent audience of Indian origin and 50 per cent British, and once again we got the Audience award for Best Picture. Meanwhile, the FFI circular came out that we can submit the film for the Academy awards and the rest is history.

How many Academy members have watched your film and what has been done from your side to step up the campaign considering a lot of lobbying happens for the Academy awards?

So far, around 200 Academy members have seen our film. Samuel Goldwyn Films and Orange Studio are our distributors for the U.S. and European market. We are aware that it is tough competition. Both Samuel Goldwyn and Orange Studio have a history of doing this campaign. Samuel Goldwyn Films got this film from Bhutan – Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, the film was shortlisted for the Oscar race. Year before they won the Oscar for another film as the Best International Feature. Orange Studio have done similar work with The Father that won several Academy awards, they had also worked on the French film The Artist which won five Academy awards. They do know how to campaign and go in a proper way and I will be obviously seeking their guidance. Our main aim is to show the movie to maximum Academy members, we don’t need to do anything else because we know the film has already won many hearts.

It is learnt that a few months ago your team screened the film for director Ashutosh Gowariker, whose Lagaan was the last Indian film to be nominated in the Best International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards …

Yes, we screened the film for Ashutosh Gowariker not just because his Lagaan went to the Oscars but he was also helping us with my film. He told us five months ago that all of you make your tuxedos, you are going to the Oscars. He was the first person to predict that. Then we laughed and forgot about it. We were slowly building buzz, we had screening in the South, in Gujarat before the announcement (of Academy award) that it would be ready for the 14th October release since enough people are talking about it.

 

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What kind of cinema did you grow up watching? Tell us about the beginnings, how did you get into filmmaking?

I never knew Hollywood or any other cinema, I grew up watching pure masala mainstream Manmohan Desai kind and Amitabh Bachchan films, you name it and I have seen it. It is the only popular cinema that came to the small town of Kathiawar. I discovered Hollywood and other cinemas later when I went to study Fine Arts in Baroda. I was really curious about other cinemas and discovery of the world for me was a lot through movies. I started watching French films, Italian films, Akira Kurosawa’s films … I started making documentaries and then I came to Mumbai. I struggled a lot; it was really very hard to break in. But I realised there was an opportunity to do television commercials and corporate films. I had a company with my partner, there we succeeded and I made good money.

Then came this project with renowned cartoonist R K Laxman where they were trying to adapt his cartoons to television series. I was picked up by the production company and was told to sit with Mr Laxman, go through all his cartoons and come up with the idea how to turn that into a series. That was my big paycheque because it later became the very successful television series Wagle Ki Duniya. Then I did a lot of documentaries for Discovery Channel, BBC and while I was doing documentaries, I wrote many movie scripts trying to see how I could fund my first film.

How would you react to allegations that your film is a copy of the 1988 iconic Italian film Cinema Paradiso? Many social media users had shared posters of both the films and that looked almost identical, both featuring a young boy looking in admiration at a film reel …

Look, an ardent cinephile would be able to identify some of the Easter eggs in the narrative. This movie is a film about film, it is not about homage to one film, it is homage to cinema in general. Lot of people will know when they watch the movie. They will know that this is a unique, original story and any filmmaker when they make a movie about the movie you are bound to have the same elements. Steven Spielberg has made such a film, Sam Mendes has made a film called Empire of Light. I would simply say that just because we hold a film strip …now that was the only way to look at the film. Dadasaheb Phalke, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton …all looked at the film the same way. It is a premature statement for the audience to jump to such a conclusion. They should wait and watch and as I say the audience is smarter than the filmmakers, so they would know.

What are your expectations?

It is very big. I respect the Indian audience and I know honest stories are going to touch their heart. I want people to come with their families. I am almost willing to reimburse the ticket if they don’t like it. We just want people to watch and all questions will be answered.

Lastly, what next?

Well, I am working on new storylines. I am also dying to get back to cinema halls and watch films. I am really excited about the Amitabh Bachchan retrospective that has started playing to celebrate his 80th birthday. To watch his films on a big screen would bring back memories of my childhood. Can you imagine watching all those masala entertainers with the audience again?

Seema Sinha is a Mumbai-based mainstream entertainment journalist who has been covering Bollywood and television industry for over two decades. Her forte is candid tell-all interviews, news reporting and newsbreaks, investigative journalism and more. She believes in dismissing what is gossipy, casual, frivolous and fluff.

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