The filmmaker to watch out for!

Therersquos something actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui told me once which has remained stuck with me sincemdashthat among all costars those he fears the most are nonprofessional actorsThat the world itself is so perennially privy to watching regular people on screenmdashas they are in a real situation over social media broadcasting reels videos photosmdashmakes his job of capturing a lived moment without it coming across as acting hardest stillI felt this observing among other phenomenal newbiesnonprofessional actors the largely expressionless lsquopahadirsquo boy Prakash Mayank Singh in Ajitpal Singhrsquos feature debut Fire in the Mountains that dropped on Sony LIV recentlyStills from the feature film Fire in the MountainsTherersquos a scene in particular at the orthopaedicrsquos clinic where the doctor pulls out a saw whirring right over the boyrsquos legs to scare him off You can watch his parents in the same frame but behind a glass wall looking on like nothing has hit them either Why does the doc do thisSingh tells me ldquoWe rearranged the set so all reactions can be observed simultaneously And the actual sound on a set no matter what you add in the postproduction really makes a scene happenrdquoThe kid throughout the film feigns paralysis of his legs He can walk perfectly fine What kinda boy would do that Well you take a look at another poor footballer kid in Singhrsquos short film Rammat Gammat on YouTube ldquoWouldnrsquot he do the same to avoid schoolrdquo the director asks me and I figure how hersquos beautifully transposed the same character into two of his filmsShort Rammat GammatLike Rammat Gammat My Best Friendrsquos Shoes Fire in the Mountains is set in a village Gujarat with the former Uttarakhand lattermdashuniquely capturing beats of rural life as opposed to urban in a way that only someone whorsquos sufficiently experienced both ldquocan illuminate such truthsrdquo Until 16 Singh whorsquos I guess in his late 40s had primarily grown up in a village in Punjab and then GujaratStruck by both his works I looked out for his other short films since Irsquom told hersquos made plenty I watched Humming Bird and Loop on private links He hasnrsquot shared them online because he thinks ldquotheyrsquore not greatrdquo Well they do broadly draw you in with gorgeous nature as a backdrop first and hold your interest until the final frame stillHe made them to travel to film festivals withmdash unwittingly ldquomimicking the mastersrdquo the sorts of Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Humming Bird to Kim Kiduk LoopThose directors were reflecting on their own experiences Only he figured he was ldquodealing with emotions that were mellow and conflicts that were smallerrdquo The word is artsy that the disinclined rubbish as pseudo perhapsSeries Tabbar PicsTwitterWhereas his own life Singh says has been way more dramatic ldquoWhy shy away from melodramardquo Itrsquos when those shorts didnrsquot go far or anywhere at all that he gave up on hislsquofestivalfilmmakingrsquo ambitionsWith nothing to prove he set out to make Rammat Gammat thatrsquos closer to himmdashhaving been through much discrimination as a sardar kid in a post rsquo84 Gujarat himself You can also sense glorious glimpses of Francois Truffautrsquos The 400 Blows 1959 in itThatrsquos the film at a screening in Alliance Francaise Ahmedabad that first exposed Singh to the sort of cinema hersquod wanna watchmakemdashhaving been an avid reader otherwiseInternetTorrent downloads helped widen his filmic palette Singh was a chemistry graduate from a fairly modest economic background The first screenplay he wrote got accepted at the Sundance Script Lab He moved to Mumbai in 2013 Fire in the Mountains finally got made in 2021mdashcompeting at the World Cinema section at the Sundance film festivalFor independent filmmakers fishing in festival waters makes sense to achieve local acceptance still In a sense Sundance acclaim subsequently got Singh to direct Tabbar 2021 Sony LIV his webseries debut thatrsquos surely among the most admired Indian shows ever Foremost you notice its strong sorted storytellingItrsquos a topnotch slowly simmering thriller set in Punjab that Singh was given a 450page screenplay for that he pared down by 150 pages The attention to detail shows ldquoElse we were just going to lsquochhaaporsquo going from plotpoint to plotpointrdquo Singh tells meWhatrsquos common to Rammat Gammat short Fire in the Mountains feature Tabbar series Well all stories are about relationships But these deal with family at the centre in ways that they so believably exist Singhrsquos main talent lies in marvellously marinating in the morally greyNo you never judgemdashcertainly not mothers who sleep with power to get by Yoursquore drawn deeper instead into the lives of others who yoursquove observed from a distance at best Maybe on a Himalayan traveltrekmdashlike owners of the sasta guesthouse off Nainital without a road in Fire in the Mountains They come alive as if you know them so well nowAs for placing supposed nonactors Singh says the trick is to pair parts with people in life whorsquore already like their written roles Takes time Singh shot Fire in the Mountains in 28 days He spent four months casting for itGiven his resume Irsquod always wanna know what hersquos up to next Itrsquos a miniseries set in Bombay zeroingin on urban class wars he saysCanrsquot waitMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper