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In Talegaon, a small town in Maharashtra nestled between Pune and Lonavala, Avinash Arun read an interview of filmmaker Subhash Ghai, who he was a huge fan of. It mentioned that the filmmaker was a student of Film and Television Institue of India (FTII) and Avinash, who was in his mid-teens, was informed by his father that it was the place where movie makers were crafted. He was fascinated.
Years later, when he told his father, a cotton mill worker, that to get into FTII he needed to make a short film, his father took out Rs 50,00 from his provident fund and handed it to him. It was the first film that Avinash was producing, but it never got made and he lost all the money. “My father didn’t say anything, he was happy that his son at least tried. That’s really the origins of my story,” says Avinash Arun, a now accomplished filmmaker whose works like Killa, Paatal Lok and the recent Three of Us have created a gentle splash in the Mumbai film industry.
Father’s love for movies, a son’s dream
Born in Solapur, Avinash Arun is the second generation in his family to get educated. His father was the only one who did double graduation, while his mother didn’t pass 10th. “She still doesn’t know what my actual job is! No one in my family ever asked me, ‘Baba which standard are you in?'”
Avinash’s portfolio, apart from his three sensational directorial credits, includes being cinematographer on some of the biggest and most acclaimed films, right from Masaan, Drishyam and Yash Raj Films’ Hichki, headlined by Rani Mukerji. But growing up, it was his father’s love for the movies–Talegaon had just one cinema hall, where he would watch films or travel 40 kms to Pune cto atch them on the big screen–that got passed on to the filmmaker.
Avinash grew up just wanting to make a film. He wished to apply for the direction course at FTII but was unsure as his financial background didn’t instill confidence in him. “I was not well read, add to it the insecurity that filmmaking is expensive, so who would fund me to make a film? My parents didn’t have money, no one knew me. I figured cinematography students would start earning soon, and I didn’t have money, so this came out of necessity. It was a very practical reason.”
In his town, there was a small government institute which would hold part-time photography courses for kids who are not educated, so that they can put up a photo studio. Avinash then enrolled in that course and before FTII happened, shot many marriage videos and birthday parties! “I used to even sing in orchestra to earn money.”
The big breakthrough and the small cracks
Avinash was 16 and a half when he worked as a setting boy in Sumitra Bhave–Sunil Sukthankar’s Marathi directorial Devrai, starring Atul Kulkarni, Sonali Kulkarni and Amruta Subhash. For his next project, he was promoted as production assistant, where he met acclaimed Marathi filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni, who was studying in FTII and was making his diploma film. Avinash assisted him, and then ended up assisting almost five-six batches of the film institute across 25 diploma films before he even joined as a student in 2006.
“I still remember when I saw my name on the list, I kept crying while riding the bike all the way home. When I got into FTII, that moment is frozen in my memory. I only longed for that, nothing else. I don’t get excited meeting anyone– I feel happy and warm, sure–but I feel studying in FTII, learning about films will always remain my most cherished time.”
When he got out of FTII and reached Mumbai, it was a different world. The Solapur boy’s first international trip was to London, when he was assisting cinematographer Anil Mehta on Imtiaz Ali-written Cocktail. “I was giving claps on the film. The first shot had Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone. It was my first Bollywood set up! I was nervous, obviously,” he chuckled.
Soon, however, Avinash experienced peak euphoria when his 2014 directorial debut Killa won over the audience across the world. The drama was selected for the 64th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Crystal Bear, followed by National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Marathi. Avinash Arun had arrived– but for him, it was too much to sink in.
“When my first release was my own directorial, it was very overwhelming. I couldn’t handle it, all the love that started coming. It felt like serendipity. Which is why perhaps after Killa, I fell in depression for two years. I thought I had experienced all the highs of the journey. It felt like being on top of Mount Everest. So I started to think, now what?”
“And then I started to sink, because all I had ever thought was to make a film. Once that was done, I didn’t know what to do next. My couple of years just went by thinking this. Ab kya? Who am I, where am I, what am I doing, where is this journey taking me?”
Battle with anxiety
Avinash Arun still has the photograph of a theatre when Killa released in India and was running parallelly along with two other films of his–Masaan and Drishyam. It was a moment Avinash said was hard to digest, as he saw an unparalleled high within three years of being in Mumbai. “In three years, a film of mine was winning at Cannes, another at Berlin and the third was minting Rs 100 cr here. The range was widespread– from arthouse to a commercial film with a big star. But I couldn’t make sense of what was happening.”
Avinash soon started having anxiety attacks. When he somehow managed to keep the weight of his first film aside, the challenge to mount his next reared its head. It wasn’t a commercial film and Avinash found incredibly hard to find takers.
“The most frustrating bit for me was, ‘Why am I not able to crack my second film?’ It took me seven years. The film I wanted to make was not commercial and my bread and butter was not dependent on direction. My kitchen was running with my cinematography work. As a cinematographer, I felt I could still compromise a bit here and there, but as a filmmaker, I won’t. That made my anxiety worse, because everyone would ask me, ‘Oh you made such a good film, now what next?’ This went on for five years and I had given up hope completely.”
What added to the woes was people’s taunts. One of the most common jibe that Avinash heard in the industry was– ‘cinematographers make beautiful films, not good films’. It started to play with him, making him wonder if he was just a fluke.
“I told myself maybe I am just a one-film wonder. I never called myself a filmmaker too, I felt I am primarily a cinematographer to whom filmmaking just happened. It would always weigh me down. When I began, I was also told by people that how am I thinking to turn a director when I have not even started my journey as a cinematographer. They called it a suicide. But for me, it was a dream to make a film, so I had to.”
Regaining peace
In those five years when he couldn’t direct his second film, Avinash gained a lot of experience working in “all kinds of films.” So, even when he was battling crippling anxiety, the chaos of a film set would keep him grounded.
“It was my work that saved me,” Avinash said and credited Paatal Lok for spearheading his journey as a maker. After the massive success of the Prime Video show, Avinash made yet another solid series, School of Lies, with co-creator Ishani Banerjee. He followed the acclaim of the show with his second feature, Three of Us, which released theatrically last month and stamped Avinash as one of the most original filmmaking voices of the country today.
“I am in a better, happy state today. Now I only shoot for myself and for my friends occasionally, but at least for the next five years I want to concentrate on direction and my filmmaking abilities, explore more stories. I have spent almost four-year worth of my days on a film set. So, my karma saves me a lot. That’s the only time I am not anxious, I know how to shoot, and I know how to follow my dream,” he added.
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