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Director’s Profile

After dabbling in radio, copywriting, acting and theatre, Kanu Behl studied film direction at the Satyajit Ray Film and TV Institute, Kolkata. His first documentary An Actor Prepares (2006) landed in competition at Cinéma du Réel, France. Next, he directed the documentaries Found Him Yet? (2007), for NHK Japan, and Three Blind Men (2008), for ZDF/ARTE.

He co-wrote, director Dibakar Banerjee’s Love, Sex & Betrayal (2010), bringing him recognition as a voice of note in India. His debut feature Titli (2014) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section, and has since travelled to numerous other festivals. Currently, he’s immersed in a search for what his next feature Agra means to him.

Synopsis

Guru is madly in love with Mala, and although Mala doesn’t actually exist, he insists that he wants to marry her and live together with her in the small, family home.

The house is divided into two floors – Guru’s mother lives alone on the ground floor and his Father lives on the upper floor with a mistress. Also living in the house is Chhavi, Guru’s cousin, a dentist, who wants to build her own clinic in the same house.

As everyone tries to convince Guru that Mala doesn’t exist, Chhavi is entrusted with the responsibility of curing him. Hassled by the close proximity of this woman and constantly cornered between family and his own ‘mind’, Guru slowly begins to unravel. He becomes reclusive, and starts frequenting the neighborhood internet café.

This is where he meets Priti, the café owner, who has a severe limp due to polio. The day she walks in on him masturbating, a strange ‘love story’ erupts. As Guru’s repressed sexuality flowers, he starts getting better and Mala begins to disappear. The family is happy, until Guru tells them he wants to marry Priti and claim the terraced house.

Agra then becomes the bizarre account of the ‘sane’ characters coming together to claim the family home, out of their own vested interests. Guru’s blossoming love story is carefully dismantled, piece-by-piece, until he ends up in the madhouse; happy finally to have a space all of his own.

Achievements

2023 Busan International Film Festival
2023 Cannes Film Festival - Directors′ Fortnight

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