With his highly evocative, bracingly intuitive debut Pedro (2021), Natesh Hegde arrived as a brilliant new voice in Kannada cinema. Skeins of feudal violence limning that film and a rich filmic language that echoes with suggestions outside the frame carry over into his new film, Vaghachipani (Tiger’s Pond). Backed by Rishab Shetty, Anurag Kashyap and Jeremy Chua, the film is set for a world premiere at the upcoming 75th Berlin International Film Festival in the Forum section.
Ahead of the premiere, Natesh Hegde sat down with Outlook’s Debanjan Dhar for an exclusive chat, where he spoke about understanding space and setting, adaptation and real-life transference, his wariness of films getting too tailormade in development labs. Edited excerpts:
What was the starting point of the film?
♛The initial seed of the film came from something I witnessed during my college days. I used to see a character like Pathi (the mute, mentally challenged shepherdess played by Sumitra) in my hometown. When I was studying in Sirsi, at the bus stop, there was this one girl. You couldn’t make out whether she was mentally challenged or mad. After some point, I realised her belly bulged. We were on leave from college and when we returned, she had disappeared. Either she got killed or moved to some other place. But what happened to her and her child?
How did the idea of merging what you had seen with Amaresh Nugadoni’s short story come about?
✅Later, I read Amaresh’s story. His story had a similar character. He too said he’d seen several people like her. This happens in every small town, city. Because of that character, I got interested in the story. I did make many changes. I added the gambling track and wove in the tiger’s presence. All I took from the original story was this particular character and the character of the politician (Prabhu, played by Achyut Kumar). I rewrote many things. Cinema is not about the story. The story can just be a line, you can expand it and bring into it temporality. I feel cinema is closer to music than literature.
You’ve said in several interviews that you mostly treat the screenplay as just a blueprint, a pointer, but do they also have like camera movements like, say, the extensive use of zoom ins in this film, or a freezeframe? Or do those decisions emerge at a later stage?
🔴It was all there in the script. If you aren’t conscious about it, you can’t use them predominantly. The way I write is how I see the film in my mind. I am always editing. That’s why we haven’t shot anything that we didn’t use in the film. It’s very precise.
Did the decision to shoot in 16 mm film come early during pre-production?
Yes. We also wanted to shoot Pedro (his debut feature) in 16 mm. We knew if we go around saying we want to shoot on film stock for a debut, we’d probably be beaten up (laughs)❀. This time too, of course, people were hesitant when we pitched it. You just can’t imagine the film if it were shot instead on digital. It’s not just for the texture. I wanted to evoke the idea that this film was discarded and it has suddenly been discovered, like finding an old coin in a pond.
Both Pedro and Tiger’s Pond conjure a vivid sense of place and atmosphere. The environment is the key. There’s such a strong situatedness of your characters within a specific setting. Talk to me about evoking the inner rhythms of a place, the early conversations you have with your cinemaographer in this regard.
🌟I’d say if you write with space in mind, you’ll write differently. If I set a film in a city, it’s not just the setup. Space dictates the drama; it’s not the characters. In the opening sequence when I imagine the boys running and the girl sitting, that space created certain angles. We aren’t just looking for locations. Space becoming locations, it’s very misunderstood. I hate that. Now of course, the settings in my films so far are all close to where I’m from. My assistants are my friends, so it’s all very organic.
Do you feel you have to inhabit a place, understand a terrain to a great degree before you can shoot in it?
Yeah, my Director of Photography (Vikas Urs) and I spend months together before shooting 🐟the film. We stayed together for two months just roaming and checking the light, scanning how it’d be in a particular place. We waited for the leaves to fall so we got that texture.
Tiger’s Pond took the Pedro route. This was at the Asian Project Market and NFDC Work in Progress in 2023. Could you talk about the role of development and co-production labs in shaping this particular project and your journey with your work so far?
🐷They are helpful but personally, I don’t like discussing too much at these script labs. I don’t have that temperament. Somehow I got selected and happened to be there. I like to work spontaneously, even in finding producing partners or deciding the casting. You can’t just calculate a film as a project; I can’t do that.
How do you respond when a mentor makes a script suggestion that may be inappropriate?
☂Maybe, sometimes they make sense. My problem is I hate perfect films. In a way, these are all becoming very handcrafted, tailormade films. When this happens, you lose your originality. It becomes lifeless. There’s no formal or narrative ambition.
This film has some incredible collaborators. I want to especially highlight Jeremy Chua, who’s such a prime mover in South-east Asian cinema. At what stage did he come on board?
Pedro💦 had won a prize at the Pingyao film festival. Jeremy was a programmer there. Deepti D’Cunha connected us. From this film’s inception, he was present. He always asks you whether you’re doing the right thing for the film at any given point. He doesn’t question your intentions. He never talks about what kind of film works best for this or that film festival. With him, it’s always firstly about you and your film; figuring out the ecosystem or sales can happen later. He talks about subtitling, color grading and sound design. He’s a creative person who happened to be a producer.
Pedro hasn’t released yet. When something like that happens, how do you process it?
ꦑYou really can’t move on. It’s always there. Distribution is a beast. Neither can you force a filmmaker to release his film and chase OTTs. He can’t keep doing that. It takes a minimum of three years to even make a film. Films by Mizoguchi and Bresson made me realise my story can also be a film. I feel films don’t have an expiry date. This freed me. I’ll make my films the way I want to and I am sure people will discover them one way or the other.
Talk to me about working with Dileesh Pothan, who’s acting in the film.
♓I wanted to work with him because of his gigantic size. Also, he’s playing an immigrant. So without saying too much, I can show that he’s a misfit in the village. I wanted that dimension; it gives him a vulnerability. Afterwards, we became good friends. He pushed me to act in Malayalam films. We don’t talk about films. We just chill together.
As a director who’s also acting in his film, does it pull strings at any point or is it largely a fluid process?
🍰Yes, it is fluid. Simultaneously, you can’t shoot and act. That’s the only thing.
What’s your headspace like before the Berlin world premiere? Are you nervous?
♉Not really. The film is done. Everything else is extra, the festivals and glory. Now whatever it does, how people respond to it, the film is out there. It is taking its path. I see festivals as a launchpad.
Do you watch a lot of films at festivals?
▨Not many. But I’ll try to catch a few at Berlin, at least the Hong Sang-Soo and Tom Tykwer films.
Vaghachipani (Tiger’s Pond) will have its world premiere at the 75th Berlin Film Festival.
