Of Indian origin, born in Chile and based in London, Shalini Adnani, who got noticed at Sundance with her short film White Ant, has unveiled her debut feature, the highly promising Our Share of Sand, in the International Film Critics’ Week at the 83rd Venice Film Festival.

Cineuropa: Where did the idea of setting your film within the sand-mining economy come from?
Shalini Adnani: I come from a family of architects and builders. Through them, I discovered there was a sand-mining crisis. It fascinated me because it’s the resource we’re running out of the most drastically after water. I also love what the landscape says about us, as human beings: it somehow holds all the history and the violence we endure as a society. I did a lot of research on the topic in southern India, where there’s a major crisis in this field.

At the heart of the movie lies a family. Why did you choose to tell this story through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl?
I read in psychology texts that this is the age when we begin to develop a sense of morality, to understand what’s right and what isn’t. But it tends to be very binary: with young teenagers, there’s no room for ambiguity, no grey area around ethical questions. I found that very interesting, and I remembered I was exactly like that at that age, so I wanted to explore how a morally complex situation could be perceived by a child at the stage where she’s grasping what morality actually is.

The script holds several surprises. Did you want to create a kind of suspense?
I like to play with genres, and there were elements that felt like a thriller that I wanted to weave into the film. It’s not a typical story for that age, because this young girl experiences events that can seem dangerous. So I played with the narrative structure in that sense.

You can make out three concentric circles: the girl at the centre, then her family (her father, mother and grandmother) and, finally, the whole country.
Absolutely. I tried to look at the microcosm of a family and how it reflects society at large. In general, I’m very interested in deciphering how politics or society enters our private lives, affects who we are and shapes our values.

What about the blend of genres? It's got an almost documentary-like underlayer, yet it's a film that is absolutely not a documentary. To what extent did belonging to the Indian diaspora influence your approach?
I like stories that feel like storybooks, and this film virtually is one. There’s a prologue and an epilogue. The movie can be real, but can just as much not be. It also speaks from my point of view. I didn’t want to make a film about India for a European gaze. In general, there’s an expectation around a certain type of story from India, with realism and poverty, but which often doesn't show the reality of the evolution of this country that combines several social classes. That includes an upper class that's more associated with the West and which we call "non-residents". Embracing all parts of society strengthened the realism.

Would you say your film is feminist?
On certain levels, it’s 100% feminist. The movie explores how women endure patriarchy and how they’ve been silenced within the family structure. A young girl becomes aware that the world is essentially like this, and I think we’re witnessing the emergence of that awareness.

Yet you take care not to judge any of your characters.
I’m drawn to morally ambiguous characters. At university, I worked extensively on the subject of incarceration, and I never wanted to judge people’s character. I think the only way to transform a society is to try to understand other points of view. At 12, like the age of Maya's character, you have a very binary idea of good and evil. Yet her father is a charming character who probably had good intentions, but who lives in a society where he may have been pushed to do things we might consider wrong. But when you put yourself in his shoes and he explains himself, it shifts a little; you feel a twinge of empathy for him. I like exploring those grey areas, whereas society today is sadly very binary overall.

The sound work is remarkable. How did you go about it?
All of the music was created by distorting the sounds of grains of sand and pebbles colliding, or branches snapping. The idea behind this was how we twist the Earth, and how the sounds of nature and everything around us reach us slightly differently from their source. And in terms of the mise-en-scène, I also wanted to create many layers, focusing on what is visible and what isn’t. In the same way, for the landscape, I made a point of staying very close, with the idea of experiencing a place from a subjective perspective and the sensations that entails.