In a small, idyllic village in Nagaland, two young boys skip Sunday school to explore on their own. Ade (On a Sunday), a delightful short film in the Tenyidie language shot on 16mm that premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, has lately been making its presence felt at film festivals across the globe. With its simple-yet-nuanced storytelling, Ade is a gentle reminder of home, and all that is left behind.
I spoke to the London-based filmmaker Theja Rio, and Nancy Nisa Beso, the producer of the film.
Theja, tell me about your growing up years, your childhood. How was it? How did art or films feature in your childhood years?
Theja: I grew up in Kohima, and the first significant change that came in my life was in 2001 when my older brother passed away. I was very young, so I have very vague memories of him, but I became the only child and grew up not having a lot of people around me. I think that sort of forced me to be imaginative to entertain myself. The first significant cinema memory that I have is from when I was around seven years old – my mother took me to Delhi, and I had my first theatre experience. I watched the third Lord of the Rings film, The Return of the King, and it completely blew my mind. I have a Lord of the Rings tattoo on my back, because it played such a big and real role in – not just my childhood – but in my decision to become a filmmaker.
I started writing at a very young age, but strangely, I was writing a lot of rap. In standard two or three, I thought I was going to become the next big rapper. I eventually started writing short stories, and when I was in my teens, I transitioned to writing screenplays. The more I wrote, the more possessive I became of the material that I was writing down, and I didn’t want someone else to translate my vision to the screen, and that’s when I decided to become a director. I had no idea what being a director meant, but I had known Nancy since I was a very young kid, and she was already working in the industry by then. Having someone like her to show me the path was very important, especially for someone who comes from the region that we do, where, you know, the film industry is non-existent. That’s how I started making short films and became a director.
So writing came first, and then there were films. When you shifted to writing screenplays, were you watching a lot of films? What kinds of films were those?
Theja: In Nagaland, you are mostly exposed to Hollywood or Bollywood films. I didn’t know what world cinema was, and the initial scripts I was writing down were trying to mimic the films I was being influenced by. Around 2015, I attended a film lab that happens in Sicily, and that was where I shot my first short film. It was also my gateway to international films and I was completely blown away. Also, it gave me the confidence to write and tell stories from where I come from.
Tenyidie is your mother language, and Ade (On a Sunday) is the first film you did in Tenyidie. What made you want to do that?
Theja: In 2022, I moved to the UK to study at the National Film and Television School, NFTS. I was living there and I was making films, writing scripts. I was decently happy with the first two films I made, but at the same time, I was longing to create something that was closer to home. And so, in between my first year and my second year, I came back because I was yearning to make something that was rooted to my identity. Around this time when I was thinking of making films in Nagaland again, I remembered this young boy called Ade, who I haven’t met for close to two decades now. It felt that he was the perfect character to represent the world I knew growing up. And the very sense of nostalgia that he represents, made me want to make the film.
Also, you know, every time I meet someone new, I’ve had to explain where I come from, because internationally – and even nationally – Nagaland is so underrepresented. There are always raised eyebrows when I tell people that I come from India.
And so, I guess, subconsciously, this is also my way of telling people where I’m from. And I believe that letting your heart speak for you and the world that you come from is extremely important.
Nancy, is this also a world that you have known?
Nancy: I am almost a decade older than my director, so I have seen even more complex and even more beautiful parts of the village and the town and everything else. My dad was from a village which had only 30 houses. So, everybody knew each other. We didn’t live there, but when I would go and visit the village, I could go to every household and check what they were cooking for dinner and choose which house I wanted to go to and eat. So, I did grow up with that. Whether it is me, or Theja, or many others who leave Nagaland for better education and better exposure – we all have this sense of nostalgia for home. I have studied and lived in Delhi, in London, and have now been living in Bombay for 10 years. I have travelled around the world, and understood that there are lots of people, no matter where they come from, who carry this world with them wherever they go. And this is the response that we have got with the film.
When the film was at IFFLA, after the screening, so many people – many of them were immigrants – came and told us how it reminded them of the childhood they had, their first alcohol or the first cigarette or of how simple life was. How everything was so easy, and yet everything is so complex now when it is all so easily available.
I also felt that it spoke of a very simple world, but it was also not so simple because, you know, maybe Ade will grow up, and he will not have a very simple life because his father is an alcoholic. It is right at that moment of coming of age when he is still living in a simple world, but it might just fade out in a few years. And I think that was done very, very beautifully in the film.
I would also like to know about the music of the film because I really liked it.
Theja: To talk about the music, I have to talk about the casting as well. I was still in the UK, trying to find someone who could play Ade, and I was trying to get in touch with as many boys around that age as possible.
And then, one day, my cousin sent me this video with no intention – he had no idea that I was looking for a young boy. It was this video of someone playing the guitar and a young boy just whistling – to that tune that you hear in the film. And I was completely intrigued by the boy, the tune of the whistle, and the boy’s face immediately captured my attention. I asked my cousin to get in touch with the boy and ask him whether he’d be interested in acting. The boy had no idea what acting was. So he didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no. I finally ended up meeting him and getting him to play Ade. And I liked the whistling so much, I even put that in the film. I found out later that the tune is actually pretty popular, from a very famous local artist. The music composer of Ade is Nir Perlman, he’s from Israel. I got him on board only after we shot the film. I thought the whistle captured the tone and the melancholy of Ade, and I asked Nir to maintain that melody throughout the film.
Ade is based on your memories, but you had been in the UK, and you started shooting after you came back. How much of the script, or the way you had imagined the film while you were in the UK, prepping for it, changed while you were shooting?
Theja: I only wrote beat sheets, because I was aware of the fact that I was going to be working with non-actors. I didn’t want the actors to try and remember any dialogue, because I was wary of the fact that that could affect their performance.
And quite frankly, it was the easiest script I’ve ever written because, for me, it was basically cherry-picking things that I remembered. Ade was a boy I knew growing up, so I already knew and understood this character in my head. And so, the first draft that I wrote down is the film. I never ended up writing another draft.
Lastly, tell me about 16mm. I understand that 16mm fascinates you, and you’ve used that in your previous works as well. Why do you feel the need to work on 16mm?
Theja: I think the choice to shoot on film comes inherently from the stories that I’m inspired by. I am, by nature, very nostalgic, and a lot of the things that I like to write about are things of the past, you know. And so, I like my films to mimic the textures of the images that we still have in our photo albums. And that, I guess, is a yearning for the times that have already gone by. I wanted my films to feel tangible, and film captures that very well.
I know many people are quite scared to try their hand on film, and initially, when I first shot on film, I was a bit of a naive filmmaker, so I just jumped into it and made the film. Fortunately, I’ve never really had a big problem with the format, and the more experience I’ve had, and the more films I’ve made with it, it feels like home for me now.
Theja is going to begin shooting his first feature film (once again, in 16mm) in February. It shall be an extension of Angh, a short film he had made in 2019, on the Konyak headhunting tribe of Nagaland.
Nancy has been working to bring short films from the Himalayan foothills to a wider audience. ‘The features have a journey and have a path carved for them somewhere in the universe, but the shorts really don’t,’ she says. I wish her all the best in her journey.
