Case Study - Sandhya Suri (2000), National Film and Television School

Sandhya (right) was studying at the National Film and Television School in 2000 when she received a One World Student Bursary. She produced a short film, 'Safar', before graduating in 2002. 'Safar' was then developed into 'I for India', a feature-length documentary which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, and then released in the UK. The film is based around footage taken by Yash Pal Suri, Sandhya's father, who documented his life in the UK after moving there from India in 1965.

So how did her idea for a short film eventually reach the cinema? And how did the student bursary help?

Sandhya writes:

"My film, which eventually became ‘I for India’, had been in my head for ages – from before I started at film school. I actually applied to film school with it. The film is based around the footage shot by my father over many years, and I knew I had golden material, and that I had to tell this story. I was sure it would be my graduation film before I even started.

Once I had started studying, some of the teachers told me it might be hard to make such a personal film – they said it’s often better for filmmakers to wait until they are more mature. But I wanted to do it, and since my Dad was getting quite old, I decided I couldn’t afford to wait! Also, at that time at the film school, we were really encouraged to shoot our documentaries domestically, and not to go abroad. I think this was to try to make us focus on the story-telling rather than dealing with the production difficulties of international filming, but budget was no doubt also an issue. I think attitudes have changed now, though, and part of that must be due to the bursaries offered by One World. Part of my film involved shooting in India, so I applied for the bursary and was very happy to receive it. It really boosted my budget.

Once I’d finished the film, I still wanted to make it into something bigger – a full feature length documentary. Having the short film already in place was incredibly useful for that. It was like having a calling card, but better – commissioning editors rarely commission off a piece of paper these days. If you have a good short, people become convinced about your filmmaking skills, and it can also give producers a strong idea about a longer project that you want to do. For my film, the story was already there in the short film, so there was never any concern about how it was going to end. That’s something commissioners will always want to know: ‘What’s going to happen? How’s the film going to end?’ But there was none of that – they had confidence that this would be a good story. 

So, with the short film ready, we then entered it into a number of different festivals. Pretty quickly we had it screened at Cinéma du Réel in Paris. We got a special jury mention there, and the film was featured in some of the newspapers in Paris, which was excellent exposure.

After that, I was able to meet a few different producers and show them the short. They asked me whether I’d thought about making it longer. At the Sheffield doc/fest I met a producer with connections to ARTE and he got me thinking again about a longer film. I knew I didn’t want to climb the ladder too slowly – I was keen to make my first feature right away, so I decided to go ahead with it.

The process was a long one, but eventually we finished the feature version. At first, it had a fairly poor reception – we were rejected by Sheffield, LFF and other British festivals. At this stage, I think it would have been easy to lose belief, but I kept sending stuff off; my editor and I were sure it was great! You can only rely on yourself to do that work. With festivals, I found it was best not to email every festival out there, but to be more targeted.

Not long after, the Sundance festival accepted it. We went to Sundance that year, and it was wonderful. I really felt like it was the home of independent film-making. It really seemed like a festival where they genuinely consider everything that’s sent to them.

The screening at Sundance was the first time the full film had been screened in front of an audience. At the end, we had a lot of people in the audience standing up and crying – they were saying, ‘This is my story!’ They were immigrants from many different countries and the film had obviously touched them. That was really moving.

After that, the film was taken on by Celluloid Dreams, an international sales agent. We really wanted to get a UK screening, and finally the ICA in London screened it. It opened to amazing reviews in the UK press and the film got exposure I could never even have dreamed of – I think I’ll be looking at those first reviews when I’m old!"