Interview | Sarvnik Kaur on making Against The Tide: ‘Climate change is not removed from our value systems’

In this exclusive chat with Hindustan Times, the director talked at length about the reception of her film- both from the viewer and the people involved in the film, and the shifting tide that has come in terms of non-fiction filmmaking in India.

I watched Against the Tide right when it premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier last year. Since then the film has travelled the world through several film festivals. What were some of the reactions or the responses that surprised you or stayed with you?

Between the East and the West, the audiences and the vocabulary that we are raised with where I feel like materialism hadn’t caught on quite late. The change in the whole… even talking from the perspective of a generation that I come from, I saw liberalization happen in front of my eyes and saw my parents’ priorities shift dramatically. I saw their ambition become a pre-dominant sentiment that seemed to connect a whole subcontinent with what the future looked like.

So for me, the conversation between the value system that we were raised with, that were supposedly my parents’ generation and the new one that we arrived at… where I saw my own inadequacies of being in Bombay, fear of constantly not being enough, not being able to achieve whatever it is that one was supposed to achieve. So I think it has been almost an interesting case study for me. On one hand the predominant idea for me was to say that climate change is not removed from our value systems. The way we feel anxiety right now is knowing that our survival is connected to money. If we don’t have money, then we will not survive because we know resources are far fewer than they were at one point in time. This idea of hoarding for the individual self is basically coming from that sense of ensuring survival.

For me that was the most sublime layer that was open to interpretation, no matter where you come from. I was lucky enough to find a story trajectory which was engaging enough to find the moving of plots. What populates your film that is hiding this thread at the bottom of it? I was happy to see that even in the West, where the vocabulary is not centred on the self and the realization of the self as the being that is connected to everything else, even if that hadn’t happened, I think the stirrings of it one could see. That, for me, was very interesting.

Someone in the UK told me, ‘I got my child along, an 8-year-old kid and they are very concerned about LED fishing.’ So, on the surface, the reading is all about climate change, the anxiety that comes from there, over-exploitation of our resources. Even if one has not tapped into the fact that the problem starts from the fact of considering nature as a resource, as if we are disconnected to it. The point of my film was that life is joyous and it has its ups and downs, no matter what your material status in the world is.

In that sense Rakesh was an absolutely aspirational character, one that I was raised to be like, who I had lost along the way. And in that sense, Ganesh’s fear of future was very palpably visceral for me. It was what I felt and lived with all the time. So, I think I saw my bipolarity between the two of them. I am glad that the friendship between these two has received such a good response, even if the deeper layers of it need more social context or upbringing to tap into.

The camera is so close and upfront with your characters even when they were not agreeing with each other. It was uncomfortable at times to be in that moment with them, as if I am intruding in their space in some way. How was the process of filming those exchanges and the familiarity that you developed with these two people?

We achieved something very rare to have three people and their families suspend disbelief for an extended period of time. The film took 6 years. That cannot be done by lying or conniving. It took me quite some time to arrive at this story where I was hanging out with the two men, I had formed a friendship and it took me a year to know that they were my characters. I didn’t know yet how to connect their story. In a lot of ways, I think that your characters don’t really think of themselves as archetypes of anything. I think it was a lot of confidence-building that went into it where the story, as I was wanting to tell it, was not my problem.

I told them, ‘I know that your life is really hard, but can you show me the way? I do not know what it is to be you but if you took me where you are then together perhaps we can say a story which is not perhaps your story but a story of our times.’ In that, there were a lot of disagreements between Ganesh and Rakesh, where Ganesh had never seen Rakesh as a moral benchmark, as someone whose approval he sought in life. Similarly, for Rakesh, this acceptance that love can transcend class and that he was not as alienated.

What happened was as they started to hear me talk about what I wanted to do with the film, they saw the stance that they take and who they stand for. That kind of agency, when you share with your characters, it becomes something really beautiful. I didn’t have their consent, I had their enthusiasm- and that makes a world of difference. With Rakesh, he thinks he has nothing to hide. Which makes being with him a pleasure every step of the way, because he is so open about everything.

With Ganesh, on the other hand, there is a doorbell to be rung. You need permission. The purest form of love for anyone is attention. For five years my life centered around the two of them. That is a very unique feeling, which you seek when you are casting for your characters. You are seeking a person who is also wanting to be seen. We find a sense of humanity in seeing ourselves through the eyes of others. Ganesh was already an Instagram influencer, someone who thought he was ahead of his times and his community needed to pick up pace to catch up. His ambition wasn’t just his alone and in that he felt quite misunderstood. He had this perspective of education abroad, exposure to the world, and within that spectrum, seeing where the Koli community lies. He had righteous anger about it, and that kind of attention when you give to someone and say, ‘Hey, I want to say your story. Can you tell me how to say it?’ Because whatever I may imagine is less than what the possibilities of your life contain. That is how I found this enthusiastic co-creator on this journey. The biggest achievement for us is the melting of judgement and Ganesh finding in his story, the story of the world.

I am wondering if there was any unexpected reaction to the film from the people who were part of it.

The edit lock happened in October 2022, when I first showed the film to both of them before I could send them to film festivals. I needed them to give me the go-ahead. Ganesh, Rakesh, Devyani saw it, but Manali was not there. Although Manali and I were in touch through the edit process, and something very interesting about the camaraderie that we developed. Manali was feeling almost invisible in that marriage and she first realized that when my camera comes out, is when Ganesh can’t run away. She can then voice her angst in life, because at that moment he is forced to respond. Giving voice to someone on camera is one thing and editing a sequence out is completely another. I also wanted her blessings as I was going along.

One day I asked her about the scene where Ganesh had sold off her gold and showed it to her, and she said that it must be kept. So there was an ongoing allegiance with her. Likewise, with the rest of characters as well so that there was very little loss in translation. So when I showed the picture to them, Rakesh and Devyani were super excited, while Ganesh, on the other hand, had gone quiet. He didn’t say anything, and my heart sank. The next morning I called him and we both were very emotional. He said, ‘Thank you for making such a pure film, I needed to come back home and apologize to Manali because I needed to realise that this one person who stands by me no matter what, I was not considerate of her feelings.’

I was also curious to see how Ganesh’s family thought about it, what Manali’s family thought about it. It felt like a victory when both their families thought that we had gone to a great extent to show a modern fisherman’s life. To see what are the pressure points on them. When one has accumulated, then the loss seems much bigger. For the members of the Koli community to thrive while watching the film, was something.

At the MAMI premiere, everyone was there on stage, along with their families. Somebody said, ‘We would like to hear from the women, what was it like when the camera was on them?’ Kaki- Rakesh’s mother, who is just amazing, said: “Camera aaney se pehle bhi main gareeb thi, aur camera jaane ke baad bhi main gareeb hoon. Ab tum log ko ye pata hain ki ab ek aisi aurat rehti hain (I was poor before the camera came and poor when it went away, but now one knows that this woman existed).” Manali felt that she was seen for the first time in her life. It is a rare feat where one arrives at a destination together and there was no betrayal along the way. I also realized that after the film came out, to watch it over and over again for Ganesh was becoming a problem. He was slipping into depression. It wasn’t like he sold off his boat and the business started doing well. He sold off his boat, joined a multi-national company. From an entrepreneur he had become an employee. There was a loss for him, of pride and dignity. There was also a withdrawal since I was busy with the edit and the kind of attention on his life was not there. I had to encourage him to do therapy and that is something that I carry with me, in terms of my responsibility towards my characters.

There has been a lot of growth and emergence for non-fiction filmmaking in India. As a filmmaker, what are some of the joys that you still retain in your process?

It is a privilege to be able to make films. I feel like I am highly unemployable. I have been fired from every job I ever held, so certainly, being employed by someone was never going to work out for me. I am glad that I found my own way of survival. I have also figured that as a person I do need much to live my life because my life is very rich in this profession. I get to live many, many lives. Documentary filmmaking is where one is constantly reminded that they are standing in their own path of learning.

To learn, one needs to step away from their own path. It is that negotiation that constantly happens that no decision will be a good decision forever and no bad decision will be a bad decision forever. It is living in a constant dichotomy of feeling almost omnipotent and absolutely helpless, on the other hand. It is a life that makes one to be in their own solitude. Everything starts and ends with me. Knowing what a privilege it is to live that, be constantly aware of it. Another great change that has started to happen with our generation of documentary filmmakers is forming a community and that is such a great step towards decolonization. What the colonizers have done is fractured us, where one is so removed from our communities, constantly being tied in competition. Constantly trying to be bigger and better than other people.

The fact that we are beginning to find each other, helping one another along, sharing resources is a privilege that we need to take advantage of. From a lone warrior to the fact of knowing that we are all fallible, we have friends and community to catch you when the going gets tough, is great.

Against The Tide is now available to watch on MUBI.