‘Kuch Sapney Apne’ first-ever sequel to a queer film in India: Sridhar Rangayan and Saagar Gupta

Mumbai, Feb 24 (PTI) Love transcends gender and sexuality and “Kuch Sapney Apne” is a film that explores the modern complexities of a modern-day relationship, say acclaimed filmmakers and gay couple Sridhar Rangayan and Saagar Gupta.

The film is a sequel to their 2018 movie “Evening Shadows”, which, according to the directors, travelled to 82 festivals and won 27 awards.

“’Kuch Sapney Apne’ is the first-ever sequel to a queer film in India. We are very excited about it. In the sequel, we’ve four love stories, one is of the gay couple, one of the parents and two more love stories. This film is talking about how love is love whether we are queer or not, and relationships are challenging for everybody,” Rangayan told PTI in an interview.

Gupta said more than a love story, the film talks about the value of relationships, and how significant they are to human life, irrespective of their gender or sexuality.

“If you require someone to lean on, you should have that kind of confidence that there is someone who has your back,” Gupta added.

Set against the backdrop of a small town in South India, the sequel picks up where their 2018 semi-autobiographical film “Evening Shadows” left off — with the lead character of Kartik coming out to his conservative mother, Vasudha (Mona Amegaonkar).

Kartik is now in a live-in relationship with Aman (Arpit Chaudhary). However, as these young men navigate their lives together, tensions arise when it is discovered that the former had a fling in Sweden.

Rangayan and Gupta — who also founded India’s first LGBT festival Kashish — said

the decision to make a sequel stemmed from the audience’s continuous curiosity about the characters introduced in “Evening Shadows”.

“Everybody kept asking me what was happening to these characters. We had to wait till 2022 to have a story and shoot this film, which revolves around a gay couple story and it talks about their story primarily, their issues with the relationship, how they negotiate it and what their aspirations are,” Rangayan said.

The duo said they borrowed many elements from their own lives to create Vasudha’s character. Gupta said his mother was a district-level painter but after her wedding, she gave it up to take care of the family, while Rangayan picked up the details from the conversations he had with his mother when he came out about his relationship with Gupta.

“I had a tough time coming out to my mother, we had almost seven years of conversations. I came out in the 1990s. My mother was from a small town and she couldn’t understand what being gay was, but she accepted my partner Sagar, she fell in love with him, he’s like family. ‘Kuch Sapney Apne’ is not so autobiographical, I wish I could have a fling with somebody else. But we are very loyal to each other,” Rangayan joked.

“What is art, if it’s not reflecting your own life that’s what we always try to embody in our narratives, so this is what we have been doing, and we will continue to do it,” Gupta added.

The director duo said their next film will be a groundbreaking love story between a Jewish-American professor and an Indian Muslim singer.

Rangayan has an ambitious wish list for the cast, hoping to include Ishaan Khatter as the gay Muslim singer, along with seasoned actors like Shabana Azmi and Mohanlal in parental roles.

The director, who admires the portrayal of the LGBTQ community in mainstream films and OTT shows “Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga”, “Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan”, “Badhaai Do”, “Heeramandi”, and “Made in Heaven”, hopes to make an action-packed film featuring an LGBTQ protagonist.

“I want to do LGBTQ action thriller with bike chases, shooting guns, etc. Why can’t we just do it with LGBTQ people, we are there in every sphere, we need to get into action drama (space), but not focusing on acceptance. We are done with that in 2025,” he said.