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| Sajda Pathan in Anuja Photo: courtesy of Graves Films |
One of the stronger short films on this year’s Oscar shortlist, and notable for its powerful central performance, Anuja is the story of two sisters struggling to get by in Delhi, one of whom is singled out as having an unusual ability with numbers. The boss at the garment factory where they both work wants to exploit that talent for his own ends, but it also leads to an opportunity to get a proper education, with all that that promises. With a lot on the line either way, Anuja – played by Sajda Pathan – is faced with a difficult decision.
The director of the film, Adam J Graves, hails from Los Angeles and, like much of that city’s filmmaking community, has faced a difficult week because of the wildfire current blazing through it. He felt obliged to cancel a prospective screening of the film because safety comes first, but found the time to meet with me to discuss it, and to talk about the organisation which was central to the project and to Sajda’s life.
“My wife and I encountered the Salaam Balaak Trust while we were researching child labour. We were coordinating with non-profits in Delhi with children who are working or who were previously working, and the Salaam Balaak Trust came on our radar because they run several orphanages throughout Delhi and they provide food, shelter and education to kids who are coming in at the train station.
“Every day, roughly 100 kids on average arrive in Delhi. Kids that are at the age of 14 or younger with really nothing but the shirts on their backs. Some of them are fleeing abject rural poverty. Some are maybe orphans. Some may just be coming into the city for opportunity, but a lot of those kids wind up being exploited. And what the Salaam Balaak Trust has done is they've set up centres throughout the city where they allow those street kids to come in and play and engage in informal educational activities.
“There's so many kids, to be honest, they can't provide a bed for everyone, so they basically provide a context where those kids can come and get services. Healthcare services, educational services, and food, of course. It's tough to think about, but because they don't have a bed for all of them, the kids come in, they do their thing, and then at night they go back onto the streets. And the ones who show an interest in staying and pursuing education and things more systematically and seriously, they try to find a home in one of their shelters.
“We were just completely inspired by what they've been doing and all the good that they do. One interesting fact that we didn't discover until we were already midway through filming the film, is that the organisation was actually founded by the family of the powerhouse director Mira Nair, who made everything from Monsoon Wedding to Mississippi Masala. Namesake is, I think, my favourite film of hers. Anyways, she's a fantastic, incredible director who's worked on lots of projects of global scope. She's one of the titans in independent cinema. And she made this film called Salaam Bombay in the 1980s, which was her feature début. And she inspired her mom, who was a social worker, to establish an organisation that helped those street kids.
“I'm pretty sure that it's because it was established and inspired by art, that the Salaam Balaak Trust has a really robust arts programme for the children. Part of this, of course, is a theatre programme. They do a lot of theatre programming throughout the year and they have classes. So because of their backstory, they understood what it was that we were trying to achieve with the film. They understood the power of cinema to make positive change in the world through stories that hopefully are ends in themselves – I mean, when you make a film, you want your film to be entertaining, you want it to be an artistic expression – but if it can also have some kind of impact, then that's icing on the cake.
“I think the people at Salaam Balaak Trust understood that the power of cinema to create empathy and awareness surrounding these issues, so they appreciated what we were doing and they basically were like, ‘Let us know how we can help.’ They did a lot, but the single most important thing was that we found through them our star actress, who is just a raw talent. They also helped us with some locations and things like that. And of course, when we were researching, there's a lot of the kids that they work with. A lot of the kids they bring in have backgrounds of child labour. So they have case studies that we were able to read through and children we were able to meet and talk to about their experiences.
“We're so grateful for Anuja to have gotten so far and hopefully they can use it as a tool for raising awareness of what they're doing, and it can maybe even some generate some funds for them. And of course, for Sajda, our actress.”
To the charity, Sajda was already a known talent.
“The fascinating thing about her is that about eight months before we shot our film, she was living on the streets with her sister and they were just getting by. She was apparently begging outside of the Hanuman temple, and one of the social workers from Salaam Balaak Trust had a conversation with her and said ‘You can come and get some food here and play some games.’ And one of the theatre instructors was working at that centre and immediately noticed that she really had a gift, because they would do some play acting as part of their games.
“Laetitia Colombani, a French director of a film called The Braid, who was working with that theatre teacher on casting her feature film, was looking for a young girl to play the daughter of one of the main characters in that film. And Pankaj Gupta, who became a collaborator on our film, said, well, we should see if Sajda wants to try out. And she did. She was really excited about it, but she was busy on that set. Pankaj was sending me audition tapes from girls from the Salam Balaak Trust and we were receiving audition tapes from other organizations and from the film industry in Mumbai, but the entire time Pankaj was like, ‘Just wait. As soon as Sajda gets a free day, we're going to record a self tape and I promise you, you're going to like it.’
“We had to wait several weeks, maybe even a month or two. We watched hundreds of audition tapes. But when we saw Sajda’s, the decision was just made instantaneously. There was no question about it. This was the girl. We were complete. Even though our expectations were high, she totally exceeded them. It wasn't a quantitative difference, it was a qualitative difference. You know what I mean? It's not like she was just a bit better than the others in terms of capturing what we were looking for. She probably provided something completely different than any of the other audition tapes.
“I tend to think that that difference was 99% to do with pure talent – which would have gone unnoticed were it not for the work of trust. I mean, there’s so much unbelievable untapped potential and talent out there in the world, kids who just don't get opportunities. And then 1% of it must have something to do with the fact that she herself was living on the streets with her older sister, and so the story of the film rhymes with her own personal background. I think that allowed her to connect with the material and also, most importantly, connect with Ananya Shanbhag, who played her older sister.”
It's also film about a child with a special gift, I point out.
“Exactly. And had Sajda not come and come contact with the social worker, she probably would be on the streets today. We had nothing to do with discovering Sajda, let alone finding her a home. That was all done by the Salaam Balaak Trust, and by the time we were filming, Sajda probably had more days on set than I have ever had. She was the veteran of the film industry by the time we were filming, because I'd only made two films before Anuja and one was shot over the course of the weekend and the other was a zero budget documentary shot in an iPhone.”
On top of the other difficulties of being in that situation as a child, there are obviously specific issues faced by girls. We talk about a scene in which the girls look at marriage adverts. I remark that it's unusual to see that discussed between girls, rather than between adults arranging something on their behalf.
“It's not based on a true story in any way, but it draws from specific interviews that I read, kids that I met, the kinds of conversations and giggling that I overheard in the classrooms and things. And so the marital ads that they were reading in that scene, those are real ads. We didn’t have a script for that scene. What I did was I read through a bunch of ads, I found ones that could be kind of ironicised and many that were just kind of silly. I think some of them are intentionally silly. And I pulled those out, and then what we wanted to do is basically let the girls improvise. I had written some jokes that we could place in there, but we weren’t really using much of that in the end. We just gave the girls the ads and then let them riff on them and see what came about.
I was also reading case studies of organisations in Delhi and in major cities in India, non-profits that hold mass weddings for poor women who can't afford dowries, women who don't have families that can support a wedding can get married and they get married as part of the mass ceremonies where all of the aspects of the wedding aresatisfied as a group wedding. I was reading stories about that and just reflecting on how challenging it would be for a girl who dreams of one day having a family and a career, but who doesn't have any resources to make that happen.”
Coming up: Adam J Graves on locations, folklore and the chemistry between his stars.
