THE FILM VERDICT: Last Film Show premiered at Tribeca in 2021 and is now India’s
submission for the Academy Awards. How do you feel about this second lifecycle, so to
speak?
PAN NALIN: I’m thrilled, because after Tribeca, where we screened an unfinished version (we
were still working on the sound mix and the opening and closing credits), there were other
festival invitations, but a lot of them fell through because of the Omicron variant. So, I
thought we were done, to an extent, and then, right before our premiere in India, we got the
news that we’d been chosen to represent the country at the Oscars, and the film is getting
distribution in multiple countries next year. And I will now be going to some festivals, like
Palm Springs in January, a year later than originally planned. I’m very busy with Q&As, I
just did one with an audience in Toronto. It’s very nice, because we had kind of given up, we
thought the movie was going to end up on a streaming platform. I can believe in cinema
again!
TFV: Your film deals with the transition from celluloid to digital in India, which was a
massive change. And you finished shooting right before the start of the pandemic, which also
had a huge impact on the industry.
PN: Yes, the way we consume films has changed quite radically. It’s been challenging to put
out a film like ours, because a lot of theaters have shut down permanently, even in cities like
Los Angeles and Paris. And the big chains aren’t interested in a film like mine. They want
Marvel, superheroes, James Bond, Avatar, IMAX. It’s going to be hard to find theaters for
some films in the future.
TFV: Was it weird to make a love letter to 35-millimeter film that pretty much everyone is
going to see digitally?
PN: (laughs) Yes, very weird. The funny thing is, when I wrote the script, we had a deal with
Kodak, so I could have shot the movie on film. But there’s a problem: we’re shooting in the
Indian countryside, and you would have to send the material abroad for processing, and that’s
expensive. Logistically, we would have needed the financial means of a Christopher Nolan
project! So, it was frustrating to have the film stock and not be able to use it, but we found a
middle ground with my cinematographer: if you put a vintage anamorphic lens on a digital
camera, you get a more film-like feel, because those lenses are flawed, there are
imperfections.
TFV: Perhaps, with hindsight, you should have left the film slightly incomplete after the
premiere.
PN: (laughs) Yes, that’s right. I could have left some scratches and noises.
TFV: You’ve previously made films in Hindi. Why was it important for you to make this one
in Gujarati?
PN: I’m from Gujarat, and most of the locations in the film are from my village. There are
many different film production hubs in India that make films in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil,
Kannada and Malayalam, which are the most popular languages. Gujarat also has its own
smaller production center, which makes around 20 movies a year in Gujarati. In my case, the
language is dictated by the subject, and for Last Film Show it had to be Gujarati, which
allowed me to cast local non-actors. Of course, this led to problems with financing because I
don’t have a big Bollywood star. And if I had made it that way, it wouldn’t have been my
story anymore. So, I sold my apartment in Mumbai to finance the first part of production, and
then Orange Studio in France joined the project when we went to the Cannes Film Market to
look for pre-sales. Because of that, post-production was done in France, during the pandemic,
with lockdowns and, at one point, our sound mixer getting COVID. There were many ups and
downs.
TFV: Do you think the Oscar factor will make Gujarati productions more popular going
forward?
PN: Oh, yes, that is already happening. The funny thing is, when they announced the
submission, there was a huge backlash, because there were many popular studio films, like
RRR, in the running. We were getting threats from fans of those other films, and the selection
committee had to come out and say their choice was unanimous. Fans don’t understand how
the Academy stuff works, they just assume anything that is popular will get nominated. Then,
once the film was released on October 14, the tide shifted in our favor. The comments on
social media are very positive now that people have actually seen the movie.
TFV: And, to conclude: if it were completely up to you, what would be the last film you’d
ever watch in the cinema?
PN: If I could choose? Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America.
(Interview conducted by Max Borg)
