Lotus Visual Productions

As against the big/theatrical screen, the laptop hardly captures human stillness well. I realised this in the opening shot of Rohan Parusharam Kanawade’s Marathi film Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears), when the camera zooms-in for long on the resting face of the lead character (brilliant Bhushaan Manoj). Nothing moves. I thought my laptop had hung. These static but life-like frames are fairly common, throughout Kanawade’s film, about the death of father—and a gentle/subtle romance blooming in the ‘native’ Maharashtrian village, between grieving son, and his local friend (Suraaj Suman). It’s based on personal experiences of writer-director Kanawade, 38, whose dad used to be a chauffeur/driver, in Mumbai—where Kanawade was born/raised, in a chawl, in the western suburb. Sabar Bonda, his debut feature, premiered at the top, American, 2025 Sundance Film Festival—first Marathi movie to do so—and picked up World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, to top that! Those static images in the film too come from life itself, as Kanawade tells me, over the phone from New York, shortly after celebrating his Sundance win. “I was trying to create the portrait of the time in my uncle’s village [for father’s funeral, in 2016]. There was only my mother and I, in one place; looking outside, doing nothing [for 10 days]. That silence and stillness had to be part of the film.” Those days are neatly punctuated in the film, with longish blackouts on the screen. First shot onwards, the film flows seamlessly, engagingly—from one scene into another, like a river of sorrow, kindness, care, humour... It exhibits the sort of empathy we seek in our films, since we witness so little of it in the world around. How? Column link in bio. #SabarBonda