“Destiny is everything,” says PK Mahanandia, the hero of The Cycle of Love by Orlando von Einsiedel, selected for CPH:DOX Highlights. PK is a man who risked everything to follow his dream.
Born into a Dalit community labelled as ‘untouchable’, PK was given an astrological prediction at birth: “you will marry a girl who is not from the village, not even from this country, she will be musical, own a jungle and be born under the sign of the ox.”
Fast-forward twenty years, and PK is a vagabond in Delhi, sketching portraits on the street to make ends meet. His sitters open up to him while he’s sketching them, and he meets people from many walks of life. When a young Swedish girl asks for a portrait, he feels a connection. She’s a Taurus, plays the piano, and her family owns some forestry land.
The two have a whirlwind romance, and when she leaves India, they are both heartbroken. She promises to return, and when she doesn’t, PK sets out on a treacherous 6000-mile cycle ride across deserts, mountains and dangerous borders to Sweden to find her. He has no map, and only $80 in his pocket.
We also hear from Lotta, the Swedish girl he met, and see the story from her perspective – how she was determined to escape the boredom of her Swedish village, how she took the hippy trail across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan to India…and how she met PK. We also learn of her concern as he writes to her of his progress across continents to Sweden.
We don’t know until the end whether the two will ever be reunited, and that is the driver of the film, but there’s also a parallel story; the story of PK’s growing feeling of self-worth, shattered at birth because of his ‘untouchable’ Dalit status, as he finds acceptance across borders.
It’s a delightful, heart-warming story; a love story, a quest to escape prejudice, and an ode to the kindness of strangers.
“The story of PK’s cycle journey is an epic adventure filled with magic, but it also really moved me,” says Oscar-winning director Orlando von Einsiedel (The White Helmets, 2016). “His story covers such a rich tapestry of universal themes, from love and destiny to the idea of enduring hope.”
Before PK and the project came to his notice, the director was specifically looking for an opportunity to make a film on a positive, optimistic subject.
“I guess I’ve made my fair share of films that maybe focus on humanity’s darker sides,” von Einsiedel tells BDE. “I think the world is very, very difficult at the moment and I’ve been looking for something that really focuses on human connection… love, I think, is something that everybody can agree on.”
The idea came to von Einsiedel when he was giving a talk at a Nobel Prize event. Two young people approached him with a book about their father’s story and asked if he’d be interested.
“I was very polite, but I didn’t immediately go, wow, this is so fascinating.”
Nevertheless, he took the book on holiday with him and read it on the plane. “Then my mind sort of exploded,” he enthuses.
“I was lucky enough to meet PK not long afterwards and this had me hooked. He is a magnetically entertaining and charismatic man, with profound wisdom, a playful sense of humour, and a beautiful and open heart.”
There were gaps that the director could see in the story, too, and this is where he began to develop the themes and concepts that would eventually make the cut.
“PK spoke very movingly about the trauma and difficulties he carries from childhood, and how that affected every relationship in his life, including the relationship with himself and his own self-belief, but also the relationship potentially with Lotta. And he spoke about how the [bicycle] journey was one of the key things that made him relearn self-love.”
Orlando von Einsiedel takes a broad cinematic approach in telling PK and Lotta’s stories – a mix of traditional to-camera interviews with PK and Lotta, archival footage and photographs from the protagonists’ own collections, re-enactment, and street-casting.
“Almost everybody in the film, apart from the two key actors [Chirag Lobo and Mina Dale] is a real person that we street-cast on location,” says von Einsiedel.
Chirag Lobo, the actor who plays the young PK, set himself up as a street-artist, and gets chatting, as the camera rolls, with the real PK looking on. The result is a very natural, often moving, authentic insight into the kind of conversations that PK had on his journey 50 years before.
Von Einsiedel describes the techniques he used to achieve this. “First, I’ve got to give a massive shout out to Chirag Lobo.He’s a very, very talented, mostly theatre actor, very used to improvisation and did a lot of work to learn about PK and what made PK tick… [then] we just filmed real conversations and we let the camera run and nothing at all was scripted. And I think that’s why they feel real – because they are real.”
Following in PK’s footsteps across India, Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey, we see these conversations take place. The producers would brief people in advance as to what was happening, ask them about their hopes and dreams, and Chirag would improvise as PK, telling the story of his love, and what he believed was his destiny.
Along the way, we are shown how the local people he encounters are unerringly sympathetic and kind. The producers also found European and Australian backpackers in youth hostels who were willing to take part.
There were many moments, von Einsiedel tells us, where PK himself was looking on, moved to tears, as his life was being recreated. “It was fascinating to witness the generosity of spirit from strangers, but it was also that people would touch him, they’d hug him, something that he really hadn’t experienced,” the director adds.
With such a great story to tell, von Einsiedel had absolute faith in getting the project off the ground in terms of funding. “We decided to bet on ourselves. And so we had a number of high-net-worth individuals and then a number of film financiers like BD4, the Harbour Fund, Artemis Rising, that ultimately bought into the vision in making something positive, and a beautiful love story.”
The Cycle of Love is set for a global theatrical and platform launch his autumn, with Dogwoof handling UK distribution and global sales. A US distribution plan is also in the works.
PK Mahanandia and Lotta Von Schedvin are already undertaking humanitarian and advocacy work for Dalit communities, but what do the team hope for in terms of impact from the film?
Von Einsiedel is loud and clear on that. “The idea of risking everything for a dream is really, really inspiring… I hope it’s a film that reminds people of love, or the importance of human connection.”
“I believe cinema is a really strong tool to reconnect us with our humanity. That’s something I think we’re all in danger of losing. And I hope our film can play a role in that,” he concludes.
