Shaping a different view

Shape Of Momo. Tribeny Rai: 'I was very sure that I wanted a protagonist who looked like me so the younger generation from my community will have somebody to look up to and feel like this is their story' Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival

The Shape Of Momo unfolds against a backdrop of India’s Sikkim state, which is a distinctive area in the north-east of the country bordering Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet. Rarely seen in fiction on the world stage, it is showcased by first-time director Tribeny Rai in her female-centric drama Shape Of Momo. Her tale, co-written with the single-monikered Kislay, follows the choices faced by Bishnu (Gaumaya Gurung) after she returns to her Sikkim home from the city and finds her expectations and ideals sitting uneasily with the other members of her household and the patriarchal-driven wider community. Handled with a light touch by Rai, who was inspired by her own biography, the result is a warm-hearted film laced with humour. We caught up with Rai to chat about it at the San Sebastian Film Festival, after its world premiere in Busan to talk about its themes and, of course, we had to start by asking whether or not Rai is any good at making the small type of dumpling, named momo, of the film’s title.

Tribeny Rai on creating her main character: ' I think filmmaking is less of a spectacle and entertainment than art' Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival

Tribeny Rai: I’m very good at it and the actor who is the main protagonist is very good at shaping momo, whereas the sister, who shapes good momos in the film, really struggled. I feel like, especially in my community, no matter what a woman achieves, no matter who she becomes, she’s finally judged by her kitchen skills.

From your director’s note on the film, I see this is partly based on your own experiences. Tell me about the challenges of that?

TR: My mother hates it when I say it’s a personal story, she says: “What are people going to think?”, as you can see how the mother is in the film. It has been difficult. I think that's why a co-writer helped me because, in the beginning, when I was just writing this I felt like it's a complaint letter where I was just complaining about things that are not working for the protagonist in the film. I was just being critical of the society, of my environment and when a co-writer walked in, he brought a lot of objectivity and we started becoming critical of the character. For example, her privileges. She comes from a certain class position and she has a certain agency. She has that confidence, which the women in the village or her family don't have. It was very challenging because we did not want to portray her as a victim or hero, we wanted her to be the complex human being that we all are.

Class is quite a big element of the movie, was that something you had in mind from the start?

TR: Yes, because we didn't just want the film to be about women and their problems. You know, we wanted to put in our caste, our class and we also have a problem of immigration there, with migrants coming from outside because we come from the east region of India. The kind of Indian films that have been coming to festivals mostly come from the centre part. So we look very different. India is so diverse that when I travel from east to the north, people think I'm from elsewhere, a different country.

Gaumaya Gurung as Bishnu in Shape Of Momo. Tribeny Rai: 'I wanted to use things that inspired me at some point in my film. That's why I use that rock that I see all the time' Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival

There is huge discrimination in the country. The narrative is that we’re discriminated against in the mainland but, the fact is, when the mainlanders come to our region, they are discriminated against even more and nobody talks about that. Film needs to reflect society and has to be critical of it, so we wanted to explore all these things. I think class-wise one of the main reasons we wanted to work on this one was because, as you see, our protagonist is not empathetic towards a woman from a lower class. She thinks that the world is being unfair to her and she is being unfair to this woman who comes from a lower class, and I thought that would tell a lot about the place of privilege the main character comes from.

We also see her confusion about that status, that comes through in the film in the choices you make, such as the great scene when she is running and the camera is suddenly taking in the trees and has this moment of confusion with her.

TR: A lot of people say that she’s a very strong-headed character and they don’t know why she’s angry all the time but I feel moments like this in the film make her more human. When you say something nasty to somebody and the very next moment you regret it. With this kind of shot, we wanted people to see that she is reflecting. We also used the motif of the bird that says, “Cuckoo cuckoo” – the character says it’s singing, “What, what did you do? Said the cuckoo.” – So every time the characters make a decision they instantly regret, we tried to use that as a motif to reflect what the characters are feeling at the moment.

The natural backdrops are striking, including the rock where the protagonist goes to think, how did you choose the location for the shoot?

TR: I’ll let out a little secret. That is my own house and that is my own village because the filmmaking industry is in a very nascent stage there and I did not have the resources and also because it is an indie film and not in Hindi, you know, it's very niche and difficult to find funders so my mother is my primary producer and I put in some money. So we had no other choice but to do it in my own village and I wanted to do it there because that's where I grew up. Sikkim is a very beautiful place. As for the rock, like the protagonist I run every day because I live in the middle of the jungle and that's my only way to interact with people. I wanted to use things that inspired me at some point in my film. That's why I use that rock that I see all the time.

How did the community react because having a film shot around them must have been quite an event?

TR: Yes, I don’t think they took us seriously because there's no industry. They don't think it's a career. Once in a while my photo comes out in the local newspaper and they’re happy about it but they don’t give it a second thought. But it really takes a village to make a film there, just to carry the equipment – the hills are so steep, it’s almost impossible. Now, when I send pictures from Busan and San Sebastian everyone there is blown away. My mum is like, “Next time, everybody is going to help you” because now they see the magnitude of the whole process.

How long did it take you to get from the beginning to the end of the process?

TR: I had been developing it for quite some time on my own but after the co-writer came, we wrote it for two years. We shot it in a year.I think we shot the film sometime in March 2024 and up until now we have been going to work in progress labs, markets, etc.

Tell me about your casting process because this is a multigenerational cast.

Shape Of Momo poster

TR: I just knew the protagonist has to look like me, well, not exactly, but from my community because growing up, I haven't seen heroes who look like us on the screen. We are either trying to resonate with Korean films – K-pop is very popular in my region because the actors there look like us – or otherwise it's the Bollywood films. So I was very sure that I wanted a protagonist who looked like me so the younger generation from my community will have somebody to look up to and feel like this is their story. So I was confident about that, but we did a lot of auditions and most of the actors that we finally cast are professionals, apart from the grandmother, who is my distant relative. I actually based the character on my own grandfather, then my grandmother.

Did you have much rehearsal time with the actors to build the dynamic?

TR: Yes, we did a lot of workshops. We pretty much worked on every scene before shooting because we had limited resources and I had to get my camera all the way from Delhi. We didn’t have a day to waste, the light was going because we were shooting in the winter, it was raining, so it was challenging.

So do you see yourself telling more stories from your region?

TR: Definitely. I'm not sure if I'll stick to narratives because it's not really my forte because when I was making films in the film school, I was more experimental and surrealist. I was inspired by Agnes Varda and Luis Bunuel. But definitely more stories about our people, because I think we’re very under-represented in the cinema scenario in the country and in the world we are virtually non-existent. I would like to dwell more on human relations. I think filmmaking is less of a spectacle and entertainment than art.