Berlinale 2025: Shadowbox | Interview with Tanushree Das, Saumyananda Sahi and Tillotama Shome

As a debut film, directors and couple Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi are elated to receive such a fabulous response to their Bengali film Baksho Bondi (Shadowbox), which had its world premiere in the Perspectives section of the 75th Berlinale.

“People are constantly coming to us to congratulate us and Tillotama Shome, and it feels so surreal to have our labour of love at the Berlinale,” said Tanushree.

As we settle down for a quick chat at the Grand Hyatt in Berlin, the director duo and their lead actress have a lot to say about the film. “We are co-directors of this film—he is the writer, the story is from me, and then he is the cinematographer, while I edited the film. So it’s basically a collaboration through and through,” smiles Tanushree.

The title Baksho Bondi has many layered meanings. Visually, baksho means “box,” and bondi (in Bengali) means “to be trapped.” “But it’s not just physical entrapment. It’s the entrapment of desire, dreams, and feelings. Sometimes, we create our own boxes and live within them. Baksho Bondi really fits Maya’s world—it’s the box she has created for herself, and from which she will eventually break free,” Tanushree explained.

For her, the story’s inspiration is deeply personal. Like Maya, her mother had a rebellious love story. “She had the only love marriage in a family of 12 children—she was the youngest and chose to marry my father for love. It was a hard love, though. We didn’t understand it then, but much later, we realized that my father had depression. He passed away very young, at 64, in 2018. At that time, I went into a very dark space because I had never fully understood my childhood, nor did I understand it after growing up. So, my partner—who is also my life partner—and I came together to explore this idea, to truly understand love and what was happening. That’s why we approached the mental health and distress angle from the caregiver’s perspective, in a deeply personal and emotional way rather than a clinical one,” she explained.

Saumyananda added, “For me as well, when I was growing up, I had a friend whose father believed he was God. He would sometimes disrupt our classes because he didn’t want his son in school. But whenever someone laughed, my friend would get very defensive of his father. There was both embarrassment and deep pride. Later, his father passed away—he tried to stop a train. A year after that, we were given an assignment to write about a hero, and while most of us wrote about sportspeople or public figures, my friend wrote about his father. That memory stayed with me.

This film stemmed from Tanushree’s personal experience, but also from this lingering memory—trying to imagine that family from the inside. There was always a gap between how society viewed this man and how the family saw him. But within that family, there was an undeniable pride and love. While writing the script, we realized we had to approach it from the caregivers’ perspective rather than assume Sundar’s point of view. We consulted therapists while writing, but we made a clear choice to avoid a clinical lens. Instead, we wanted to focus on family dynamics, seeing everything through the mother and son’s eyes.”

As for Tillotama’s role in the film, both directors were certain they wanted her on board. “We just knew we wanted her. At first, we didn’t have the courage to approach her because she was this incredible actress. But we wrote the script with her in mind. Then, our primary producer, Naren Chandavarkar, who is friends with her, gave her the script—and that was the beginning of our friendship.”

Tillotama describes the duo as generous collaborators: “They invited me into the process early on. I fell in love with them, with their script. They are incredibly hardworking, constantly rewriting and refining. Thanks to COVID, we had the time to keep developing the script, and with every draft, my involvement and admiration for them grew in equal measure.”

She adds, “I also feel they came into my life at a very significant time. I needed allies like them—who they are and what they stand for means a lot. On a thematic level, the film resonated with me because, globally, there’s a sense of unrest. Baksho Bondi gently highlights the invisible labour of women, an issue that is both timely and crucial. And what struck me most was that it does so without anger. Anger is important, but it can also be exhausting. This film approaches its themes through the lens of family and love, which felt deeply meaningful to me.”

She further shared that working on this film was personally healing. “Mental distress, the articulation of it, and how it impacts the family—especially the role of a caregiver—were very close to home for me. I had to care for my mother in my 40s, and all of this coincided at the same time. My personal life, the story, and how I saw the world—it all bubbled up together. And it became clear that this story needed to be told, and it needed to be told now.”

For the directors, the city and physical spaces in the film serve as an extension of the characters. “We approached physical spaces with the question: how can they reveal who our characters are? Whether it was choosing the houses, the railway station, the barber shop, or the photo studio, we always saw them as lived-in places. The city wasn’t an abstraction—it was constantly reflecting back, offering insight into the people inhabiting it.

Cinematically, we started with compositions that included the background, rather than blurring it. We shot in widescreen to let the documentary realism of our locations seep into the frame,” Saumyananda said.

He added that the tension between fiction and reality was an exciting challenge. “We shaped our working style around this—keeping a small crew, selecting a specific type of camera, and working with actors who were up for the unpredictability of it. Some scenes had Tillotama alone with just the camera, while the crew was hidden, allowing real passersby to interact naturally with the space. Scenes like the one at the railway station, Sundar talking about frogs, or Maya breaking down at the railway gate—all of these were shot without a visible cameraman, embracing documentary-like spontaneity.”

Tillotama deeply connected with Maya’s character. “I felt her arrogance as a caregiver—the kind of self-righteousness that comes from selflessly taking care of someone. That dynamic was so interesting to play. Maya had a certain superiority—she never let Sundar answer a question on his own. There were things she did that, if I did them in my own marriage, my husband would immediately call me out! That was one of my favourite scenes to perform because I learned something from it while playing it.”

As we wrap up the conversation, the directors reflect on how the film took shape. “As filmmakers, you always have multiple ideas. We had been developing concepts since the early 2000s. But in 2016, we became parents. One day, Saumyananda reminded me of this idea I had about a mother’s journey, and we knew then—this had to be our film. Becoming parents ourselves gave us the confidence to tell this story. And the rest is history.”

Film Fest Report is an accredited media at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.