In a January 2022 interview with Scroll, Assamese filmmaker Jahnu Barua described making films outside commercial cinema as “quite a struggle, but a good struggle.” He spoke about the social issues that draw him to filmmaking, the challenges he sees for North-East cinema, the influence of his mother on his women characters, and a planned Hindi film about Lachit Borphukan.
Why Barua calls filmmaking a “good struggle”
In an interview published by Scroll on 23 January 2022, interviewer Arvind Das asked Barua how he had continued making Assamese films despite what the interview called an undeveloped market. Barua replied: “Like any filmmaker, it has been quite a struggle, but a good struggle.”
Barua said he does not make commercial films. Instead, he focuses on social issues that appeal to him, an approach he considers difficult in Assam and elsewhere in India. That is his account of his own practice, not a claim that all regional filmmakers work in the same way.
Scroll’s 2022 interview described Barua as having made 13 Assamese films and one Hindi film over four decades. This is a dated career count, not a current tally. His work includes films such as Aparoopa, Halodhia Choraye Baodhan Khaye and Hkhagoroloi Bohu Door, also listed in the Government of India’s Directorate of Film Festivals catalogue. The catalogue records the Golden Lotus in India and Silver Leopard at Locarno for Halodhia Choraye Baodhan Khaye in 1988.
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How does Barua see contemporary cinema from the North-East?
Barua argued that regional film industries in the North-East need more government attention and support from the public. In his view, a small local market makes it difficult to produce films, and filmmakers can be drawn toward commercial cinema as a result. He also emphasized that the region has considerable talent.
The interview gives no market-size figures, funding totals or comparative industry data. These points should therefore be read as Barua’s diagnosis and advocacy, not as quantified findings about every North-East film industry.
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On parallel cinema, Barua said it had not received a sufficiently supportive system, including from government, but he would not call it dead. He pointed to young filmmakers in Assam, Bengal, Kerala, Manipur, Meghalaya and Maharashtra whose ideas he found promising. This was his outlook in the interview, rather than a measured forecast of the movement’s future.
What shaped his women characters?
Barua connected his writing of women to his family background and his attachment to his mother, whom he regarded as a model. He said he had felt troubled by the contrast between women’s position in Assamese society and their portrayal in films, particularly Bollywood. Describing his approach to character writing, he said: “when I write a woman’s character, I take her as a role model.”
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What did Barua recall about meeting Satyajit Ray?
Barua recalled meeting Ray twice. He said Ray had watched one of his films, and that Chidanand Dasgupta later introduced them at a film gathering. Barua remembered Ray telling him, “there is so much promise in you and I am so happy to see that.” The quoted words are Barua’s recollection as reported in the interview, not an independently verified quotation from Ray.
What did he say about the Lachit Borphukan film?
In January 2022, Barua said he was working on a Hindi historical film about seventeenth-century Ahom general Lachit Borphukan. He said he had spent two and a half years on the project, completed the script and hoped to shoot by 2023. He also called it the first film being made on the subject. Those were statements and plans at the time of the interview; the sources cited here do not establish whether the film subsequently entered production or was released.
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Barua’s civic and political remarks
Asked about the Citizenship Amendment Act, Barua said he wanted Assamese identity safeguarded, described the issue as genuine and said he did not view it through a religious lens. In response to a question about killings of civilians in Nagaland’s Mon district, he said that, as a humanist, he found any killing painful and favored an amicable solution through talks.
On political speech, Barua said he respected democratically elected leaders and that political judgments could make circumstances difficult for creators. These comments reflect his positions as expressed in that interview; they should not be reduced to a simple endorsement or rejection of a policy.
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More film context
The official Directorate of Film Festivals catalogue says Barua studied at the Film and Television Institute of India and made educational programmes for rural children while working with ISRO. It lists more than 200 such programmes, along with films including Aparoopa, Papori, Banani, Firingoti, Halodhia Choraye Baodhan Khaye and Hkhagoroloi Bohu Door.
The National Film Awards catalogue identifies Baandhon as a 2012, 96-minute colour film directed by Barua and produced by Assam State Film (Finance and Development) Corporation. Its story concerns grandparents searching in Mumbai for their grandson, missing since the 26/11 2008 terror attack. The catalogue establishes the film’s credits and synopsis, not its current availability to watch.
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