Armaan Chadha's Ankaha: Love and Compromise

There's a student film shot in Austin, Texas, lit entirely by candles. No lamps, no bulbs. Just flame.

That's the Barry Lyndon thing, right? Kubrick with the NASA lenses?

That's exactly the inspiration the director cites. His name is Armaan Chadha, and the film's called Pottage. He said the candlelight let him selectively show parts of the location... because it was actually just a regular Texas home.

So the candles weren't art, they were hiding the kitchen.

Both. And that instinct, hide what you can't afford, focus on what matters, is the whole reason I wanted to talk about his newest film.

Which is what?

It's called Ankaha. Twenty-four minutes. Drama, comedy, romance. It came out in August of twenty twenty-six. And the tagline is... "True love, just like in Bollywood..."

With the dot dot dot doing a LOT of work there.

A lot of work. Because the plot is almost aggressively small. Priya skips going to a wedding with her boyfriend Ishaan. She hangs out with a new intern from work instead.

That's it? That's the inciting incident? Someone bails on a plus-one?

That's it. And from that one declined invitation, Ishaan is forced to confront what he really wants out of his future.

Okay, but hang on. Is she cheating? Because "hangs out with a new intern" is doing some suggestive lifting.

The synopsis never says. It just says she chose. And I think that's deliberate, because the title points the same direction. Ankaha, in Hindi, means the unsaid.

Oh, that's good. The film is named after the thing nobody in it will say out loud.

And a Turkish film listing I found described it as a story of a quiet rupture, where a decision that looks tiny brings deep cracks to the surface.

I like that more than the cheating version, honestly. Because everyone's had that. The fight that's nominally about a wedding.

And is never about the wedding.

Never about the wedding. So who's in it?

Abin Antony plays Ishaan, Diya Sharma plays Priya. Seven cast members total. And one of them tells you something.

Go on.

There's a character credited only as Jeweler. Played by Manoj Balraj.

A jeweler. In a film about a guy at a wedding wondering what he wants from his future.

There's also a Father and a Mother in the cast list. Yash Puri and Ritu Puri.

So the parents show up, the ring shop shows up, and meanwhile she's at a coffee with the intern. That's not subtle, but it's structurally tight.

That's the craft of a twenty-four-minute film. You don't have room to dramatize a two-year relationship. So you let the wedding do it. The wedding is the comparison the characters can't stop making.

Right, the whole room is doing forever, and he's sitting there alone.

And here's where it connects to something outside film entirely. Chadha wrote a director's note for Pottage asking, why do we work jobs we hate, and why do we destroy things we love?

Those are... not obviously the same question.

He puts them in one sentence. A character who can't accept his boring life, distracted by the allure of a cello. Chadha's a former cellist himself.

So the guy who gave up the cello made a film about a guy who can't let go of the cello.

And then made a film about a couple where one person's future and the other person's present don't line up. Same question, new instrument.

Okay, that's the unexpected connection. Compromise is the subject either way. The cello's just the girlfriend.

His earlier work goes stranger too. There's a two-minute comedy called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Shot on sixteen millimeter film.

Two minutes on sixteen mil? That's not cheap. What's it about?

A man pushed to the edge of his moral code by the one thing he desires most. The tagline is: what does it take to become a criminal?

From Maslow's pyramid to a jeweler's counter. He's got a type.

He's been directing since at least twenty twenty-two. Nirvana, Man Goes to Market, then Endurance in twenty twenty-four, which he also produced.

And he's where, film school?

Film at UT Austin. And while making these, he's been interning in Hollywood from Texas. Literary management with Charlie Osowik, and production and literary at the Gotham Group. Reading incoming scripts, writing coverage.

Oh, that's the real education. You spend a year reading other people's bad first drafts and you learn exactly what not to do.

And it shows in Ankaha's economy. Three producers, a composer, a cinematographer, a production designer. Eight crew credits, roughly, doing everything.

So back to the question I still want answered. Does he actually resolve it? Does Ishaan pick her?

The listings don't say. All we get is that he's forced to confront what he wants. Which, for a film called the unsaid, might be the honest ending.

Man. The jeweler's just going to be standing there, isn't he.

Possibly for nothing.

And the lesson's kind of the candles again. He couldn't afford the Victorian mansion, so he only lit the corners that sold it. He can't afford a feature, so he only shows the one evening that breaks them.

Constraint picks your frame for you. Every short filmmaker learns that, and most of them stop resenting it eventually.

Now I want to know what the Austin film scene is actually feeding into. Like, how many of these people end up in LA.

Ask me next week. I've been reading about exactly that.