By Renu Mehta
Toronto
In a deserted village deep in the jungles of Nagaland, a lone chief faces an impossible choice: remain loyal to the traditions handed down through generations or watch his family embrace a rapidly changing world.
Set in the early 1960s near the Indo-Burma border, filmmaker Theja Rio’s Angh follows Anghba, the last surviving chief of a village abandoned by its inhabitants. He remains with his ailing wife and his non-speaking young son, determined to hold on as the world around them begins to change.
The arrival of an American missionary, played by Douglas Henshall (Shetland), marks the beginning of that transformation. As the mission establishes a presence in the region, Anghba finds himself increasingly isolated, guarding a way of life that is steadily being challenged.
The film was conceptualized when director Rio realized that his screenplay for a short film was indeed intended to be a feature.
“It all began when I began to write a screenplay in 2018 for a short film and almost immediately realized that this was something that had feature material,” said Rio at the Troonto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 15. Fortunately, the short film had a very good festival run and this gave me the confidence and courage to expand this into a feature. There is so much nuance and complexity that revolves around the conflict and the characters and the world that they inhabit. The short film was too short to capture all the culture specificities and all the layers that we needed to explore, so from the beginning I knew that there was a much larger story that was there to be told.”
The emotional core of the film lies in the changing bond between Anghba and his son. As the father holds firmly to the traditions and beliefs of his ancestors, the young boy becomes increasingly attracted to the new world introduced by the mission. Their widening divide mirrors the profound cultural changes taking place around them.
“We wanted to take the approach of following the lens of an insider and very often when we get films from our region, it’s mostly about the explorer and not the subject. We wanted to reverse that gaze, so it’s very important for me to tell our perspectives through our eyes and through our lens, something that we strictly tried to maintain through the film and throughout the script. There is something that is very tragic, very melancholic about generational gaps that I often observe. Our people have gone through very swift transition. The most authentic way, I felt, was to explore that through the lens of a father and son. The transition has happened so fast that we are dealing with not only with how swift it was but also dealing with the hangovers of that and the father and son dynamic emerged most organically,” stated Rio at TIFF Lightbox.
The film offers a quiet yet powerful portrait of a community caught in the grip of change. Through Anghba’s struggle, Angh explores the arrival of a new faith and the emotional cost of watching long-held traditions, beliefs and ways of life gradually give way to a new order.