The Oscar hopeful

Ajita Suchitra Veera’s short film, Notes on Her, was first nominated for the Oscars in the Honorary Foreign Film Category. This time, the student of St. Ann’s College in Mehdipatnam has her full-length feature, Ballad of Rustom, featuring in the Reminder’s List at the Oscars. With 288 other films from across the world in the best film category, the city girl is likely to be up against Gravity and other noted movies from last year.

“It’s an interesting achievement as this is a shortlist of last year’s best films, and it’s not the honorary foreign films category where Indian films normally get nominated,” remarks Ajita, who grew up on World Cinema classics and always wanted to make the kind of films she loved watching.

Her film, she says, focuses on imagination, dreams and a passion for life. “Rustom is a young man from a small town, with very vivid imagination. He does not have a college education but has a great scientific disposition. He is like a village inventor. In the film, he travels, meets people and falls in love with a painter.”

It’s a film about the Indian countryside. And about people like Rustom, who seem ordinary but are so extraordinary,” Ajita explains.

The film has kept her pre-occupied for the past four years.

“It was shot over four months in a remote countryside location in Coorg. I wanted to shoot amid the mist and fog and was very clear on how I wanted the film to look. So the negative underwent a special process known as bleach bypass, wherein the colours are de-saturated and you get high contrast images,” she shares.

In the age of digital filming, she decided to stick to good old 35mm cinemascope.

“So, it’s a ‘big film’ in that sense. I love 35mm because of the certain kind of aesthetics, colours, saturation and light and dark shades, which are important for a film. Digital doesn’t give you that kind of richness. The film has vast landscape shots, mountains, hills and valleys, for which we needed the cinemascope format,” she says.

While Ballad of Rustom has been touring film festivals and winning accolades since 2012, Ajita is still waiting for it to release in India. “At first, I was not in a hurry to release the film because it had already received international acclaim. I wanted the international audience to know that there are Indian directors who are also focused on their craft. Now, I want the film to release here because it’s where I come from,” she says.