Trouble in the forests. But don't run

In his first feature, Ashvin Kumar uses a bit of reverse psychology to drive concern for the future of the tiger and leopard.

Director Ashvin Kumar is screening his debut feature film The Forest for the first time, but he isn't as anxious as one would imagine. "Comparisons don't bother me", says Kumar of a possible association-hangover from his 2005 Oscar-nominated short film The Little Terrorist (In fact, it was the prizes and post-production vouchers that the short won at the Manhattan film festival that aided funding for The Forest). It's an audience of discerning viewers "" Shabana Azmi, Shaukat Kafi, Kalpana Lajmi, art film critics, et al. The venue is Vijay Anand's Ketnav theatre in Bandra, a small old-school screening room, complete with heavy velvet drapery and rococo-style ceilings.

The Forest, as it turns out, is a thriller, set in a fictionalised sanctuary in the Kumaon hills. A couple arrives to mend a faltering marriage. An unforeseen threat takes the form of an ex-lover-turned-wildlife warden. A man-eating leopard is on the prowl.

The primitive locking of horns between the husband and lover are no match for the primal instincts of the flesh-hungry leopard. The only way they can outwit him is if they work together for at least that one night.

Interestingly, the tale of the rocky, childless marriage is skillfully held both at the heart and yet at the periphery of the tale. The real subject of the film is the leopard, intentionally reminiscent of the man-eating leopard of Rudraprayag, one of hunter-turned-preservationist Jim Corbett's many tales of hunting experiences from the 1920s and 30s. The film's purpose "" to catapult the issue of how sanctuaries have turned into hunting grounds from the sidelines into the main arena.

That subject, by itself, is not extraordinary. What is, is Kumar's line of attack. For at the surface, it is the leopard that is the villain and the human, the victim. "I have used a bit of reverse psychology here," admits Kumar, "It is a provocative, in-your-face way of getting the message across but the thinking audience will get it," he says.

Besides, there are disclaimers woven into dialogue, like how a leopard is naturally fearful of man, and how it will not attack a human unless starving, or wounded. "Mess with them, and they will mess with you," he explains.

The close of the movie turns into a bit of a bloodbath; strictly not for the faint of heart. "I had to be true to the subject and there's nothing clinical about the way a wild animal kills its prey, is there?" defends Kumar.

However, with Kumar planning for a pan-Indian theatrical release in three languages, the censors might play spoilsport. "I like to live dangerously," he shrugs. Like he writes in his blog (http://www.alipur.com/blog/), "Creativity flourishes within limitations. Look at Iran. Censorship defines their parameters very narrowly. But what genius!"

There are rare moments of tenderness in the film, like when the husband is filming his troubled wife in an unusually carefree mood. At all other times the story is unconcealed in its rawness "" raw emotion, raw power, even raw loneliness. Kumar, though, believes there is some in it for everyone.

There's the love story for the romantics, the love triangle for the vicariously inclined, and most of all a scary movie for the thrill seekers. And if in the end by "tickling all those senses" the audience sees it for what it is "" a film with an environmental conscience, he believes he's succeeded.

The film stars Javed Jaffrey as the jilted lover and Nandana Sen as one half of the married couple, not your average lead sell-outs but Kumar is not fussed with the promise of big stars.

"I believe in casting the right actor for the right role, and this film demanded actors that could project a certain ambiguity, fit the right shades of grey; you're never sure if you should dislike them or feel sympathetic towards them", he says.

The film marks a comeback for Salim, a child from Mira Nair's Salaam Balak Trust, who plays the child protagonist in The Little Terrorist. He plays Arjun, Jaffrey's son, a role that didn't figure in the first draft of the screenplay (written by Kumar), but was introduced later to bring in a missing element of innocence, even if regrettably lost in the end.

The film took 28 days to film. Kumar proudly alludes to a lean(ish) budget of $2 million. "The trick is to make a $2 million film look like a $7 million film," he says. And that, he believes, lies in the finesse of production.

Kumar's London-based company Alipur Films, employed a largely foreign crew. The film is produced by Judith James, a Hollywood based producer and the film's music was recorded at Abbey Road Studios. "This is the quintessential crossover film," says Kumar.

What will undoubtedly shine through in the movie is the footage of wildlife shot in Corbett National Park and Bandhavgarh National Park by Naresh and Rajesh Bedi, considered the finest cinematographers of Indian wildlife. Also commendable is the use of costumes and set design, creating turn-of-the-century nostalgia, to make scenes come alive.

The mandate of Alipur Films, as Kumar points out, is to make Indian cinema compelling on the world stage. And as The Forest readies itself for a release in the US art house circuit, Kumar, who lives between London Los Angeles and Delhi, will be hoping that his international perspective will render this otherwise Indian story borderless.

He is also hoping the film will create an international profile for his company, which is looking to raise funds to the tune of $5 million to incubate screen-play writing talent.

"We want to become a sort of clearing house of development by incubating a slate of commercially viable, artistically integral films that we can then produce."

But for now, all Kumar is concerned with is gaining theatrical distribution for the film in India, and then meeting his objective of translating raw fear into lasting empathy.

That process will be aided by what comes at the end, a slew of photographs and statistics (shared by the Wildlife Protection Society of India) presented as credits roll. Hunted tigers and leopards, robbed of their might, ironically with the crudest, most rudimentary of hunting and skinning tools. Kumar is pleased The Forest has convinced the conservationists of its integrity and passion, but will the hunters turn naturalists?