The Director Who Worked From Home: The Making of Aatmapamphlet

It began with an ultimatum. Writer-director Paresh Mokashi and his wife, writer and producer Madhugandha Kulkarni told Ashish Avinash Bende that if he didn’t write down the stories he regaled them during their time together, he was no longer welcome in the Mokashi-Kulkarni home. “I have always been hearing about the adventures in his life, his love adventures, his family incidents and all those things,” said Mokashi, best known for Harishchandrachi Factory (2009) and Vaalvi (2023). Bende and Mokashi’s relationship began through cinema — Bende worked as Mokashi’s assistant.  “After many years I came to know that he belongs to the Boudha caste,” said Mokashi. “For so many years we didn't care — I mean, it doesn't happen like that, right? In our friend circle, nobody asks anyone about caste or religion. He was always telling interesting stories and they were related to the caste atmosphere, his family atmosphere. What it means to be raised in that environment. It gave his life story a different flavour.”

The stories that Bende shared were drawn from his own life, growing up as a Dalit boy in Pune. “It was Madhugandha who actually at one point told me that I should write a script,” said Bende, adding that he was “lazy enough” to not write a single word until Kulkarni figured out just how to galvanise the director into action. “One fine day, she just told me, ‘If you don't write anything now, you're not welcome in our house.’ That was the ultimatum. Within two days I wrote down a 10-page story,” said Bende. 

Having neutralised the threat of the ultimatum, Bende was back at the Mokashi-Kulkarni house. This time, instead of talking, he read out to them the story he had written. “They both loved it so much that they immediately took over,” remembered Bende. “Madhugandha started writing — she’s the producer but she’s also a writer — she started writing the script and I was assisting her in the process. Meanwhile, Paresh [Mokashi] started his own version without telling us. Two months later, we had two different versions of this film,” said Bende. Mokashi found the soul of the film in a witty and profound voiceover. He said, “He's [Bende] not a writer. He just jotted down some interesting incidents and anecdotes. Initially, it didn't inspire me. I couldn't see a film in it because I have been hearing the same stories for a while. The material required serious thought and I kept churning it over and over in my head.”

Bende went from having no written story to two film treatments within two months’ time; when it rains it pours. “Madhugandha’s version was completely commercial,” said Bende. “It had song possibilities, it was a very easy script to get the producers on-board. Paresh’s script was a little tricky, very experimental and quite sad...almost. I liked Paresh’s approach. I chose his draft.” 

Growing up in a society where one had to jump over the barriers of caste and society wasn’t easy for Bende and in Mokashi’s script for Aatmapamphlet, he found “something that I always wanted to say”. The sparkling comedy is about a boy and his group of friends, who stick together despite challenges like caste prejudices and economic disparities. For Bende, the film may be based on his own experiences, but it’s also an alternative reality.  “This is a happy film. Everything is very happy, but when you are a Dalit growing up in this world, not all memories are good, right?” said Bende. “I was getting discriminated against, I was getting sidelined. The friends’ characters in the film are based on my own best friends, but they are not my best friends anymore. All these friends that I grew up with have inclined towards the right wing and I miss them. I wanted to show them: What if they hadn’t changed that much? I just wanted to express the feeling of universal brotherhood.” Initially, the struggle for Bende was to find the right tone for his story. “I just needed to put it into the right words, and Paresh has written it so beautifully (without offending anyone) and it made me want to tell the story to the world,” he said.  

Mokashi humbly passed the credit to Bende. “The whole credit goes to Ashish, undoubtedly,” he said. “The nuance [in his stories] helped me write. I would like to give more credit to Ashish's life than my writing.” Fittingly perhaps for a film that was born out of the memory of childhood friendships, Aatmapamphlet ultimately was made by a crew packed with Bende’s present-day friends, all of whom spoke fondly of how the film is Bende’s labour of love. Jeejivisha Kale, the continuity and script supervisor on Aatmapamphlet, has also been collaborating with Bende for many years and is one of the gang that made up Bende’s crew. “We all have dreamt about Ashish's first film for a very long time now. When it was time for Ashish to make his film, there was no doubt about it. If Ashish is making a film. I had to be part of it,” said Kale. Sejal Randive, associate director and another one of Bende’s long time collaborators, said she believed it was Bende’s persistence that has made this film possible. “Aatmapamphlet is his baby, and he has worked so hard to make it the incredible film that it is. We obviously love the projects we work on because we give so much of ourselves to it, but this one is special for me also because here it feels like we did a good thing,” said Randive. 

Aatmapamphlet began shooting in March 2021 and in no time, there was an unprecedented challenge before them. Bende said, “We were shooting this film during the COVID-19 pandemic right after the first lockdown. We got permission to shoot the film with a limited crew. After shooting around 50% of the film, the second lockdown happened. We all went back home. I went to Pune to look after my mother and within a few days both of us got infected with COVID. I had to be hospitalised, and my condition was so bad that they had to admit me to the ICU [intensive care unit]. I was in the hospital for almost 23 days. When I came back home, I had lost weight and couldn't even talk properly.” 

Unfortunately for Bende, the time he needed to recover was time that Aatmapamphlet couldn’t afford since the cast comprised young, teenage boys who could potentially look very different in a matter of months. “The day I came back home, the producer called me and she asked me, ‘When are we going to start the next schedule?’ I said, ‘I just came back home. I cannot even walk properly’,” Bende recalled with a laugh. “But her problem was  genuine. Because we had shot 50% of the film with the kids and they were going to grow up — you know how fast young kids grow?” Stalling shooting by months could mess up the continuity and they would have to re-do the scenes with the kids, which was something Bende couldn’t risk because he was working on a tight budget. “I asked my doctor, ‘Can I go for the shoot?’ And he said, ‘If you leave Pune for the next two to three months, I'll break your leg.’ So we had to come up with a plan to shoot the film keeping all these variables in mind — a new plan was required,” said Bende. 

Randive remembered, “There was a lot of pressure to deal with this situation because we had a limited budget and a big cast. It was almost incredible that we managed to finish shooting with such a limited budget. We shot for almost 36 days around like 37 locations.” 

Fortunately for the team of Aatmapamphlet, everything had been planned in pre-production and the whole team was on the same page from the beginning. “We planned this film like a music video,” said director of photography Satyajeet Shobha Shriram, “because we planned it in minute detail, shot-by-shot — discussing things like how many seconds we would hold the shot and how it would move with the narration.” The entire treatment of the film was discussed threadbare. “All the shot divisions — even those things like the crushing of ice, and the ringing of the school bell — everything was written. Which is why everybody on the set knew how many shots had to be taken, what was the order, etc. It made our lives easy,” recalled Bende, who was still house-bound, following threats of violence from his physician. 

While the director was in Pune, his crew went to Daman to shoot and they live streamed the shooting to Bende who watched it on his laptop. “Whatever the camera was seeing was on my laptop,” said Bende. “Anyway you watch it on the monitor, right? I literally worked from home. They put big speakers over there in Daman, and whatever I was ordering, they could hear me. I was telling them whatever is needed.” 

Mokashi being on set in Bende’s absence helped the young cast with their performances. He managed the kids, and Bende’s “girl squad” of assistant directors managed the set. Kale added, “It was more scary in thought than in action, to be really honest. Because we were very efficient.” Randive believes that even though this was a chaotic situation behind-the-scenes, it may have been a blessing in disguise for Bende. She said, “Not being physically present can also be good (in a way). You get to concentrate on your actors and on the direction instead of dealing with all the other logistical issues that arise.” 

For the cast of Aatmapamphlet, the shoot felt like a bizarre but rewarding experiment. Om Bendkhale, who played the young Ashish in Aatmapamplet, said, “Actually we were a little worried about the schedule in Daman because we did not know how the livestream would work out.” Chetan Wagh, who is one of the standout actors in the film and played Ashish’s bestie Borya, added, “Our writer Paresh Mokashi sir was with us helping us with our lines and the scene, and the entire direction team were coordinating so well that we did not feel like Ashish sir was not there on set with us.” 

Unsurprisingly, there were a few bumps along the way. “Because Ashish could only see what was on the monitor, and we would be out of frame handling things and organising things, sometimes he would be talking and there was no one around to hear what he was saying,” remembered Shriram, laughing. “We were all busy and he was talking into a void. Then we decided that one person was going to be with him at all times — and Jeejivisha [Kale] was assigned to the monitor.” 

Kale’s work was to make sure all the scenes were in order and had been covered from every possible angle. Technological glitches made her life a lot harder in Daman. “The chaos was not with the functioning of the team, but with the technological part of it,” said Kale. “That is where we struggled a little bit because when we used to project the scenes to Ashish, there was a lag. Sometimes we used to move on and he was still looking at the frame (laughs). As the continuity supervisor, I was sitting at the monitor, waiting for Ashish to say, ‘Okay’. But the team used to move on because all of us knew. Sometimes you get it when you work in tandem with the director for so long. The fun part used to be that all of us just had to wait to hear something we already knew (laughs).”

Bende was determined to make a fun, enjoyable, lighthearted film, “Generally films which have caste discrimination as the central theme end up in a tragedy. Paresh and I deliberately wanted to change it. Instead of offending the suppressor/oppressor, we wanted to put our hand around his shoulder and look at the same situation from the same point of view,” said Bende. “After all, it is all about finding your humanity.” This is the mood that seems to have prevailed over the shoot as well. “Ashish sir told me on my first day that I should have fun. He told me to not take any stress and I think all of us have enjoyed ourselves on this film,” said the young actor Bendkhale. Wagh recalled how the cast and crew felt together despite the challenges posed by COVID. “For the entire duration, we were with Ashish sir virtually. Even during the lunch break (laughs). He would sit in his house and eat there and we would eat on set — we were even eating together,” said Wagh.  

While the ending of Aatmapamphlet may be its weakest link, the conclusion to the film’s off-screen story is much more satisfying. Bende’s film was among the films selected for the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival and has gone on to receive much love from audiences, especially after it became available on Prime Video. “The world can be peaceful if you raise your kids correctly. That is what I believe. I think if even one or two people understand this message from my film, I will consider it a success,” said Bende.