29/08/2024 - VENICE 2024: Deepak Rauniyar’s third feature is a thriller of byzantine complexity headlined by a queer police detective, set amidst Nepal’s 2015 ethnic-minority movements

The highly multi-ethnic and multi-racial Nepal has been the site of an intricate set of identity movements for several decades. An iteration of these movements from 2007-2015 saw members of the Madhesi minority community in the southern parts of Nepal taking to the streets to protest against a constitutional draft that failed to incorporate their concerns around civil rights – as well as ongoing police oppression and widespread discrimination of their community. Nepali director Deepak Rauniyar – whose other feature credits include Highway (Berlinale 2012) and Nepal’s Oscar entry White Sun [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (Venice 2016) – who is Madhesi himself, uses this deeply layered social context as the backdrop to his third feature, Pooja, Sir [+see also:
trailer
interview: Deepak Rauniyar, Asha Magrati
film profile], which has just enjoyed its world premiere in the Orizzonti section of this year's Venice Film Festival. Rauniyar takes the pen with David Barker and Asha Magrati (lead actress, casting director, and Rauniyar’s wife and frequent co-collaborator) for the screenplay.

Inspector Pooja Thapa (Magrati) is called from Kathmandu to a Nepali border town to investigate the case of the kidnapping of two young boys, the sons of a powerful headmistress. She finds help in an equally capable local Madhesi policewoman Mamata (beauty pageant winner-turned-actress Nikita Chandak) and the local police captain Madan (veteran Nepali actor Dayahang Rai), who must push through but also empathise with reticent locals to solve the case.

Our quiet but confident hero, Pooja, presents and dresses in a stereotypically masculine way – tightly cropped pixie cut and crisp, collared shirt – and prefers to be called “sir”, rather than “ma’am”, as an honorific. We also immediately learn that the detective cohabits with her father (Chandra Dhoj Limbu) and turns to her partner, Rama (Gaumaya Gurung), to care for him in her absence. “You brought a stranger into our house,” says her father, denying any relationship between the two queer women at all.

The plot and unravelling mystery are hard to follow with the additions of new characters, which occasionally become distracting over the film’s nearly two-hour running time. However, Rauniyar makes up for the screenplay’s shortcomings in his nuanced depictions of the two leading women amidst the national context, which external audiences can only begin to understand. While Pooja has lighter skin and is thus not subject to as much colourism, Mamata is of an ethnic minority group and has darker skin, leading many to undermine her position and attempt to reinforce her complicity in police brutality toward her own people. However, both face misogynism around every corner and must navigate it all while solving a high-stakes case.

Tightly edited by J Him Lee and Alex Gurvits, and smoothly lensed by DoP Sheldon Chau, Pooja, Sir has the feel and crisp visuals of a commercial thriller(-lite), rather than an arthouse work. This is complemented by Vivek Maddala’s scoring that combines both electronic and orchestral elements to create a suspenseful aural background, rounding out the film’s placement in the genre.

The most compelling elements of this sociopolitically driven police crime-drama undoubtedly lie within a closer investigation of the film’s underbelly: Rauniyar’s extremely complex series of interlocking relations and tensions between ethnicity, class, caste (which is only indirectly referenced for an outside audience) and gender. Forget momos and Mount Everest: this is your mini crash course on the Nepal of today.

Pooja, Sir is a co-production between Aadi Films (Nepal/USA), Baasuri Films (Nepal) and Tannhauser Gate (Norway). Its world sales are managed by Trigon Films.