Indian filmmaker Sudhanshu Saria: Counter-culture voices have never been more important

A still from Dal Bhat

A journey of more than a decade-and-a-half, a National Award, and several acclaimed projects to his credit, but filmmaker Sudhanshu Saria hasn't forgotten the isolation that he felt when first entering the industry. So, today, when he is in a position of power, he has found the ideal way to honour this bittersweet memory: championing new storytellers. "There was always a casual attempt to help as many people as I could. But with the new films that I am producing, it represents a concerted and formal push for the company to actually take ownership and launch two new voices," Saria told Sunday mid-day about Pech and Silverfish, the upcoming productions from his banner Four Line.

With Pech, Saria is backing filmmaker Kumar Chheda, set to make his feature directorial debut. His Gujarati short, Dal Bhat, won the National Award in 2021. Silverfish will mark Raj Krishna as a first-time director. Krishna was one of the producers on Saria's National Award-winning short Knock Knock Knock (2020).

Kumar Chheda and Sudhanshu Saria

To the filmmaker, the motivation to launch new voices also lies in wanting to back alternate storytelling, which he believes is the need of the hour. "We live in dangerous times where the media has become more powerful and influential than ever. We are told it doesn't matter. But if it didn't matter, you wouldn't have oligarchs and power-hungry people invested in controlling the narrative. So, it's even more important that counterculture voices get the support they need so we have access to more interesting storytelling that truly reflects the times we live in," he said.

It doesn't mean that the desire to back new voices doesn't clash with his own pursuits as a director, he confesses. "I always have two people in my head. The selfish, self-centered one wants to devote every waking hour to telling his own stories. And I myself have a long way to go. So I ask myself, ‘Do I focus on becoming the best filmmaker I can be or allocate time and help other filmmakers find their feet?' But when these two scripts showed up at the company, the material was so undeniable that the question of being selfish didn't matter. I tell everyone I look for ways to say no, because the minute you say yes, it becomes your problem," he said.

Raj Krishna

The journey for Pech began with a "glittering screenplay" that Saria received from Chheda. It's said to be a young adult film that examines the effects of class and marginalisation in Mumbai. While Saria loved the screenplay, it needed more work, which took three years.

"That's how it works. You start from something great, then make it brilliant. So, it was years of working away, tearing the script apart, going back to the bones, getting feedback, doing table reads. I often tell my collaborators that the disadvantage of working with me is that you have a filmmaker who is your producer. I am aware of every nook and cranny. I am not going to leave anything to chance. I am not a financially motivated producer who is looking at it like ‘you put this much [money] and recover that much'."

Usually, the development period is followed by pre-production. But Saria was certain he wanted a pit stop in between. He and Chheda took the script to the Bangkok International Film Festival's Pitch Market where they ended up winning the Jury Prize. "Here, the father figure in me pops up. You want to introduce the film to the industry and buyers in the safest setting.

Bangkok represented the perfect market for this. The process of making a pitch like that to industry professionals in itself is actually educational because you learn how to talk about your film. So that process became an excuse with which Kumar could start to visualise and be better prepared to direct the film."

The producer applied the same theory to Silverfish, a gory creature-feature set in Silicon Valley. Saria is also the co-writer on the film alongside Krishna. "We submitted it to Tasveer, a South Asian film festival in Seattle, since Silverfish is targeted at the American markets. We got phenomenal feedback, a lot of interest, and some of those relationships have now become mentors on the film. Out of one of those relationships came an invitation to pitch at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA). We had the opportunity to pitch to people like executives at Fox Searchlight and the president of Blumhouse. These are not opportunities a filmmaker like Raj would get on his first film on a daily basis. So my job as a producer is also to curate these opportunities and prepare them for that process. The art of being able to solicit industry partnerships is just as important."

Both the films are currently in pre-production. At a time when getting a film greenlit seems more difficult than ever, Saria wants to ensure he has the best investments and routes possible for these films to get made and reach the audience. "Even in these times where just getting a film made seems to be impossible, I'm very proud that the work we have done is so strong that there are multiple routes that one can take to make these films."