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Exclusive | Bhargav Saikia talks about his horror film Bokshi, set to premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam

Dec 25, 2024 05:30 PM IST

In this exclusive interview, director Bhargav Saikia opened up about making Bokshi, a folk horror fantasy shot in the deep forests of Sikkim in Northeast India.

Bhargav Saikia’s directorial debut feature Bokshi (witch in Nepali), a folk horror fantasy shot in the deep forests of Sikkim in Northeast India, will have its World Premiere at the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2025. (Also read: Best acting performances of 2024: From Fahadh Faasil in Aavesham to Kani Kusruti in All We Imagine As Light)

Bokshi stars Mansi Multani and Prasanna Bisht in lead roles.
Bokshi stars Mansi Multani and Prasanna Bisht in lead roles.

The film starring Mansi Multani (A Suitable Boy, Pari) and Prasanna Bisht (Farrey) is in Hindi, English, Nepali and an invented language Boksirit, a fully developed fictional language spoken by a few characters in the film. This invented language, presented as the progenitor of all modern languages, has been exclusively created for Bokshi by renowned Dutch linguist, Jan van Steenbergen.

Ahead of the world premiere, director Bhargav Saikia sat down for a chat with Hindustan Times where he opened up about the journey of finding the germ of this story, the incredible use of an invented language and why he wants his next film to be a horror-comedy.

Congratulations on the selection at Rotterdam. Tell me a little bit about the origin of the film? When did you start thinking about the subject matter?

Before Bokshi I was dabbling in the horror and fantasy genre with the two short films which I had made. The first one was called Awakenings which was based on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw and the second one was called The Black Cat, which was inspired by Ruskin Bond's short story. So when I made these two shorts and they travelled internationally, it opened up my mind on the wide array of genre films that exists in so many languages. This pushed me to think that so much can be done in this genre, to say things which have meaning.

I was looking for a feature film idea within the horror genre, and I wanted to tell stories with a personal connection. I studied in a boarding school in Assam and we were sent on these annual expeditions to Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. I thought of this particular expedition when we were sent to this particular place in Arunachal Pradesh. We had camped next to a cremation ground, a river and it was so spooky! I remember a couple of students had got lost while trekking, and it was such an adventure! I met Harsh Vaibhav and we talked about these idea of a horror film set in a high school on an expedition.

We ended up going to Sikkim and researching about their folklore and myths. While we were researching, we became more interested in the North Sikkim part; it was surreal. The germ of the film came from there, and we wanted the central character's trauma connected to her mother. We wanted to show how Mother Earth has been betrayed by her own children, that is us humans.

I had to bring in elements of thrill, and there were also some provocative ideas of the film at the end. We also wanted to subvert the idea of the witch, and how it can be represented as a form of feminine power.

I am fascinated by the use of a different language in the film. Tell me a little bit about how that came about…

In recent times, Bokshi could be the second Indian film, after Baahubali, to use an invented language, that too so extensively. I am proud of this particular facet of this film and what we have been able to achieve here.

High fantasy books and films usually have a fictional language attached, starting from Lord of the Rings and so on. We had a very specific use in our film, the language of Bokshi, which were also representing the first-ever humans on our Mother Earth. She happens to be a female, and becomes our human primordial mother so she would have a language that would have to unpolished and rough, without a written script.

The writer and I were very conscious that this particular language has to feel like it is coming from the Indian subcontinent. It has influences of Dravidian languages and Indo-European ones as well. This was a difficult task to achieve because we had no idea whom to approach. As filmmakers, we want to take risks. I mailed this association called Language Creation Society, asking if they could help us create this language and we were lucky that the Vice President of the association, Jan van Steenbergen, a Dutch citizen, got in touch with us saying, ‘I am a big fan of Shah Rukh Khan!’ He then said, ‘I have a deep connect with Indian culture and I really want to do this!’ That is how this happened.

Now, co-incidentally we are going to his country to premiere his film! I never thought this would be possible but the internet has opened up so much that one dares to dream.

Were there any particular influences for you when you were creating the world of Bokshi?

The one particular author who has influenced me not just in terms of storytelling and filmmaking but also in my life, is JRR Tolkien. I have been a voracious reader of his works since my school days and my deep interest of fantasy is because of his works. Some of the filmmakers who are pushing the boundaries of this genre are Ari Aster [Midsommar, Hereditary], and particularly Luca Guadagnino's version of Suspiria. He has been a huge influence, and his body of work… even the way he plays with the camera.

There is a lot of experimentation happening in the horror genre in Indian cinema, a lot of it in the horror-comedy subgenre. How do you react to this growing trend in mainstream cinema mostly?

It is great for filmmakers like us, specifically. Horror comedies are a great genre. Stree 2 is talking about bigger ideas and it can reach out to a wide audience. So I think it is a great tool. The only issue that we have this herd mentality in our industry, when something does well and everyone clings to it… I just feel specially the horror genre, not everyone can use it in the correct way, it requires a very specific set of skills. In the West, filmmakers who make a horror films have a unique aesthetic.

Still, I do think more films doing well in this genre is a positive change, that gives more young filmmakers the opportunity to make films in this genre. I am hoping my next film is a horror-comedy! I want to tell stories which can reach out to more audiences at home.

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