Business Doc Europe speaks to Kanishka Sonthalia and Siddesh Shetty, directors of French-Indian coming-of-age doc Until I Fly, which world-premieres at Thessaloniki 2024. Filmed over a number of years, the picture follows Veeru, a charismatic boy born to an Indian mother and a Nepalese father living in an Indian Himalayan village.
The film was produced by Kopuku Films Production, and co-produced by Elda Productions in association with BBC Storyville and France Télévisions. Taskovski Films is selling the feature doc worldwide.
Veeru, whose name means ‘brave,’ with a heart fuelled by resilience and a mind unyielding to adversity, embarks on a journey of self-discovery, navigating a world that rejects his mixed identity.
“We started working [on the project] in 2017, when we entered pre-production. We happened to bump into Veeru’s family when Siddesh and I went on a hike in the same region where the boy lives,” Sonthalia recalls to BDE.
While observing the child’s life, the two filmmakers felt there was an engaging story to tell. They were curious to see how things would have developed, and after making “a few test shootings,” they realised they had to continue filming Veeru and his family.
Speaking about gaining trust with Veeru, the two filmmakers explain how he showed great interest in the camera and managed to be “organic” while being filmed. The filmmakers took enough time and space to build a safe environment for him. “As a young boy, [he perceived] someone coming from outside [of the village] as not so biased towards him and his family,” says Shetty, “He was happy to share his life [with us]. That has never been a problem.”
When asked about their relationship with the young protagonist and splitting tasks as co-directors, Shetty explains: “What happened – and this also happened quite organically – is that as we interacted with Veeru, we established different [types of] bonds. For example, Veeru saw me first as an old man, then he perceived me as a brother and then I sort of became his friend, someone you’d go with for an adventure in the forest. Meanwhile, Kanishka became a sort of elder sister.” A Prague FAMU alumnus, Shetty focused more on “achieving cinematic quality” during production, while Sonthalia handled the sound and the steady shots.
On their impact on Veeru’s upbringing Sonthalia comments: “The fact we were there, right in front of the boy, [makes] you part of the story [while staying] behind the camera, so there’s surely some kind of influence we brought in.”
Meanwhile, filming his family and the village was a more delicate endeavour. Referring to the child’s intricate web of relationships affected by discrimination in the village, Shetty says: “The thing is that he was going through all these troubles, and as we could see he was somehow able to go through all of them, finding his [own] way [out].”
Nonetheless, the directors would go the extra mile in order to reassure him, always doing their best. They would often tell him: “Let them say what they’ve got to say, at the end of the day you know this is the place you belong to.”
Seeing him playing kabaddi, an Indian contact team sports, they would also encourage him to develop his talent. “That was quite revealing even for us, and we also reassured his family he was good at sports.”
The main technical challenge the duo faced was in deciding on the right camera size. They had to film in a small, mountainous village so the equipment had to be small and low-profile so that they could move around easily without attracting too much attention.
Shetty and Sonthalia edited some of the footage along the way, as they needed to show some deliverables to apply for grants and take part in pitching forums.
“As were attached [to the project] for so long, it’s been beneficial to have someone else editing the film,” adds Shetty, admitting they were, at first, both sceptical about hiring an international editor, and doubting whether this person could fully understand the specificities of the peculiar regional context. Ultimately, things went smoothly. “Our editor Audrey Marion got really into the story and [focused on] how we could portray the coming-of-age of young boy over the course of 90 minutes.”
Another significant challenge for the two helmers was in filming Veeru’s mother, a visually impaired woman with a very strong personality who may, they argue, have been affected by mental health issues, showing some “traits typical of bipolar disorders,” without being officially diagnosed.
Composer Jérôme Rebotier first saw the rough cut to gain an understanding of the whole idea behind the film and the emotions Veeru was going through. Shetty was impressed by Rebotier previous work on a fiction film set in a fantasy world and starring a child as the protagonist [The Fantastic Journey of Margot & Marguerite, 2020], and whose essence wasn’t too distant from that of Until I Fly. Rebotier first scored some parts to accompany child’s emotions, and then perfected his work at a later stage.
In one of the film’s most curious scenes, Veeru and his friends are waiting for their professor and have a casual chat about India’s “political friends and enemies.” Their talk gets surprisingly “too political” for a group of kids their age, says Sonthalia. “Life just gives this to you and things happen. […] Even though we were the directors and we got a sense of the where the movie was leading to, in the end [we realised that] everything was totally in the hands of Veeru himself.”
