Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa dalla regista Arati Kadav a Suchin Mehrotra, pubblicata ieri da Film Companion. Arati Kadav on taking her indie space film Cargo to the SXSW Film Festival:
'[Cargo], which world premiered at the Jio MAMI Film Festival with Star last year, stars Vikrant Massey and Shweta Tripathi. A deceptively fascinating examination of connection and isolation, it follows a male astronaut with the morbid job of helping the recently deceased pass on to what's next, until a female astronaut is sent to assist him.
Cargo has such an inventive and innovative premise. Where did this concept come from?
I've been working in the sci-fi space for half a decade now and before Cargo I'd written a few sci-fi screenplays, so I was very sure this was the space I wanted to be in. But I also wanted to make a story that's very rooted in India and see how I could weave in our mythology. Before this, I was actually trying to tell a story about a bunch of superheroes coming together on a spaceship, but the budget was just blowing up so much that I decided to stick to the story of one guy in a spaceship. Then I thought about what profession to give him and then it all sort of fell into place. I loved the world-building and finding ways to connect our middle-class problems and lives to the story. (...)
When you were casting, were you ever worried about how actors would respond to it given it's so different to what Indian audiences have seen before?
What I really spoke to Shweta and Vikrant about was longing and departure. That's what I really wanted to convey with the film - that nobody ever truly leaves you. (...) And they're very intelligent actors so I really lucked out that they got what we were talking about and that this wasn't some spectacle sci-fi film, but more of an intimate drama.
Why do you feel sci-fi is something Hindi cinema has stayed away from?
All the big sci-fi films (...) are all from the same predominantly western school, which were all very successful so there was no reason to explore other sci-fi narratives. And now it's become such a big genre. But I think eastern sci-fi stories and fables reflect Indian society more and are more relatable to us. I think there were a lot of false starts for sci-fi in India. They all started by trying to make films that were from the West. I think they should explore different stories. There aren't many examples of sci-fi in India but something like Mr. India they got right because they made it with a lot of honesty. I think in India we don't experiment much. If one or two were to work, then everyone here would be making sci-fi films. I'm sure of that.
Is your dream to one day make the definitive large-scale Indian sci-fi film?
Yeah, that's my mission in life. People used to ask me why I only want to stick to sci-fi. But for me the mission in life is really to make magical stories. Every day I wake up and ask myself what magical story I can tell today.
The CGI to create the spaceship was very impressive. What went into getting that right? (...)
There was a lot of design thought that went into everything, from the which font should be used in the spaceship to getting each and every screen and panel in the spaceship right. I was also very clear that I wanted a retro sci-fi feel with the buttons and knobs. Even for the spaceship, the desing was very important. I wanted to make it like a jellyfish mechanism'.
