Filmmakers Shonali Bose and Nilesh Maniyar open up about documenting the days leading up to a friend’s demise for their upcoming project, and the pros and cons of working together
Bose and her friend Chika Kapadia, who opted for a physician-assisted suicide in Switzerland in 2022, and wanted Bose to film it
A fly on the wall-- that's how one feels in a room with Shonali Bose and Nilesh Maniyar, two filmmakers who often partner up to tell stories and two friends who have each other's back. A Fly on the Wall is also the title of their latest collaboration. The upcoming documentary, directed by them and also featuring Bose, spans across days leading up to the death of their friend, Chika Kapadia.
Following a terminal cancer diagnosis, Kapadia opted tor a physician-assisted suicide in Switzerland, in 2022, and he wanted Bose to film it. She said yes, but it only became a film once Maniyar put his vision to it. "He had this thought that he shared, 'Friendship, shoot with an i-Phone so it’s intimate and seven days to a man’s death. What is he doing every day?' I couldn't think of how it could be a film. But Nilesh said that to me, and I really loved it. Often that happens, Nilesh will give me a one liner for a script or a thought for how we could write our screenplay and I get excited by that," she says.
To Maniyar, just having Bose shoot a friend would have been a diary, not a film. "If Chika would have shot his journey without Shonali, it would have been an interesting film. But if somebody is just shooting him, it’s just a procedure video. It would be like a diary. The idea of storytelling is that it should go beyond the issue the story is addressing," he says.
Shonali Bose and Nilesh Maniyar
But this was a rare situation. Bose had to make peace with the fact that her friend of 25 years was leaving, but unlike other people in his life, she couldn't spend his last days with him just as a friend. She had to be a filmmaker as well. And the friend and filmmaker in her would often clash, as Bose and Kapadia didn't align many times on what and what should not be filmed.
"It was very painful. In Sky is Pink or Margarita with a Straw, I would have had a fierce fight to get exactly what I want. (Here) I realised that I could have had a peaceful time. He has called me as a friend, he has asked me to film. Let me just film whatever he is saying and not shoot what he is asking me not to, without fighting with him. But I also have Nilesh in my head. So, while Chika’s going on telling me, ‘Don’t shoot this. Don’t shoot me in the evening. Turn it off.’ Nilesh’s is the vision I believed in, not Chika’s. To keep myself peaceful, I could have gone with the dying man, thinking, 'Okay, it won’t be a great film, but there won’t be any conflict.' But it's interesting that once I am told I am to make a film and I am directing, I can’t give in. I can’t compromise on that," she says. The heart-warming and often humorous documentary captures this conflict, where Bose is seen getting angry at him.
"I felt angry. I was so upset. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? You asked me to come and make a film on this. And now, you are yelling at me and asking me to turn off the camera.’ But then I felt guilty about feeling angry."
Maniyar says Kapadia might not have resonated with their vision in the moment, but he is sure this is the kind of film he loved watching. "In script writing, we say there’s no story without conflict. The universality to a story comes when cinema happens. While he wanted it to be shown in a certain way, I have discussed cinema with Chika. He has been an ardent lover of cinema. He also liked cinema like A Fly on the Wall."
It's only poetic that Bose could process the pain, grief and witnessing of a friend's loss with the support of another friendship, hers and Maniyar's, spanning across 15 years and four films. "It's this partnership that culminated into A Fly on the Wall, because there’s complete trust," says Bose, who first worked with Maniyar on Margarita With A Straw (2015), which the two of them directed and co-wrote, with Hindi dialogues by Atika Chohan. They later collaborated on Priyanka Chopra-Farhan Akhtar-starrer The Sky is Pink (2019), which Bose directed and co-wrote with him (with Hindi dialogues by Juhi Chaturvedi), and the Modern Love: Mumbai (2022) short, Raat Rani, which Maniyar wrote and she helmed.
As fulfilling as this partnership continues to be, it has also been subjected to hiccups from the outside. "It’s been 15 years, and still people come and say, ‘So, you worked for Shonali in Margarita?’ And I am like, ‘For Shonali? I have never worked for Shonali.’ So, there’s this hierarchy. A lot of people still have this confusion, maybe because Shonali had already made Amu (2005) before Margarita and there’s an age gap between us of 20 years. So, there's this perception. I got so scared of it, you won't find co-director business now (in my filmography)," Maniyar tells us.
And it mortifies Bose. "It’s the 10th anniversary of Margarita with a Straw and I have to say that it won’t be what it is if not for our partnership. He is also the film’s producer. But because I had Amu behind me and the credits of Margarita with a Straw were: director and co-director, which I regret. But it’s a film by both of us. So, if anyone talks about Margarita, it’s Nilesh’s film as much as it’s mine," she asserts.
Both of them agree that the outside perception has never interfered with their relationship-- Maniyar says they would be "stupid" to let that happen-- but what it has affected is work opportunities for him.
"Couple of times we have had this discussion because there’s practicality to it. It’s been 18 years to me in the industry and there’s not a single credit of mine that’s taken seriously. And I am saying this because I saw it affecting the work that I wanted to do. I regret not one second of this collaboration. It has been soul-feeding to be on this journey, to do this cinema. But when you go to a producer and they ask, ‘Acha Margarita pe aapne kya kiya tha?’ And I say, ‘Han, teen saal diye the, co-write, co-direct, produce kiya, went into depression, sought therapy, relationships got ruined and also took the film to festivals.’ And then you walk out. It's just because people are lousy and go by their impression and they want to ask lazy questions. I don’t care about it in the context of fame. It’s more about opportunities being generated because of it," he says.
Bose shares if this hadn't been the case, they would have worked together as directors more often.
"If all this hadn’t happened, maybe we would have directed together because we bring out the best in each other but identity is so important and Nilesh has to do his films by himself. But it doesn’t affect our relationship," she says, adding that a proof of it is how much they fight. "We fight creatively. That shows that we are equal."
Bose shares she wanted Maniyar to have a solo credit for A Fly on the Wall. "Nilesh didn’t want to go through the pain of invisibilisation that happens when we both direct or write something. In fact, here, I would have been the co-director, because actually I am not the director of this film. I said, ‘It’s a film by you. My name should not be on it.’ But Nilesh said, ‘People will raise this question, ‘Were you there at the shoot?’ You did contribute. You were thinking as a filmmaker. I am not talking to you every minute. Certain decisions you had to take on the go.’ And I am a filmmaker so I made those decisions in a certain way, which he was happy with because we think alike. I know Nilesh’s mind," she says.
For Maniyar, Bose is an exception among established filmmakers of the industry. "For that, I have to give her the credit. I have worked with senior filmmakers. A lot of people carry chip on their shoulder. They act superior. They remain in the zone of, ‘You didn’t touch my feet?’ So, when I met her, it was so refreshing. I didn’t feel suffocated, that's why I hung around. If you give me a chance to direct films, I will always have Shonali as my producer because I would feel I have a safety net," he says, adding that she goes a step further.
"Because of this, she also always overcompensates, by crediting me all the time. I have to tell her, 'Please calm down. Where will I go with all this credit?' It's embarrassing at times. But it’s about impression and perception. Earlier I would say I don’t want to do interviews and now I am like, 'Where are the interviews?'"
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