Overview:
Rish and Kanish view themselves as classicists in some ways and futurists in other ways. They broke a filmmaking rule by hiring a very young crew, including many South Asian department heads that gave them a shared language on set.
Long before they wrote and directed the horror-satire masala movie Namaslay, brothers Rish and Kanish were just two actors in Hollywood, turning up at auditions that stereotyped the South Asian experience in roles the brothers call “lackluster” and “downright insulting.”
It was in these casting rooms that they forged their “iron will” to take control of their own stories.
“We felt really motivated that if these scripts are getting made, surely we can write our own scripts and make them better and have our own thumbprint on it.”
Rish and Kanish Arhant-Sudhir realized that if they wanted to see authentic South Asian characters on screen, they would have to write those themselves. Standing up to the corporate Hollywood machine they describe as “enemies of art,” the brothers founded Junghal Studios to ensure their voices would never be diluted.
Working independently protects unique ideas, say the duo, and history shows that some of the most original, successful ideas have come from people who believed in their vision and pursued it on their own.
Love For Cinema
Their love for movies started young.
“My dad would take us to the movies like two or three times every weekend,” to see the latest American film or Indian film release, says Rish. Both Indian and American cinema became an integral part of their upbringing.
Growing up in the Bay Area, they had immediate access to Indian film in local theaters and to subtitled Indian DVDs at the grocery store.
“It used to be $1 to rent and $2 to buy DVDs,” says Rish. “That’s like a huge help in terms of accessibility… buy some murukus, and you can get a DVD on your way out.”
At Leland High School in San Jose, “dipping a toe in creative waters through speech and debate was the beginning of our journey as artists,” remembers Rish. Participation in duo interpretation, a partner event, laid the foundation for the brothers’ storytelling and comedic sensibilities.
“I think most importantly it gave us a shorthand with one another. It made us really feel like we want to work with each other and … the results are pretty special.”
They started writing scripts and going to auditions after Kanish joined Rish in Los Angeles in 2018. But Rish recalls, “A lot of the characters were … just like really low-hanging fruit versions of what you would think is like an ethnic minority character.”
Building Junghal Studios
Building an independent studio was hard work, but their focus on holding authorship saw them through.
“We really retain our own creative agency with, I can say pretty confidently, an iron will. And no one has ever or will ever be able to extract that from us or squeeze that out of us,” says Kanish.
This guiding principle has been the backbone of their collaboration and the founding of Junghal Studios.
They wrote their first draft of the script in 2019. “As the script developed, I think one of the key thematic elements that emerged was the idea of tokenization in diversity initiatives.”
Namaslay, their debut feature, is a “masala” manifesto designed to shatter the “white lens” of Western cinema. It has its roots in the “yoga industrial complex” – a world that Rish discovered when he turned to yoga practice on YouTube videos after an injury.
“The overwhelming majority of these videos are made by white women,” says Rish, noting the proliferation of yoga studios across LA. Their yoga teacher mother had encountered the same tokenization and commercialization in yoga classes she taught.
“The lens is the medium through which we see a story,” says Kanish. It’s the perspective that shapes how that story is understood.
The white lens is so pervasive in Western perspective that people don’t even realize they’re looking through it, say the brothers.
All these threads come together in Namaslay, sparking the story at the heart of their film. It reclaims the narrative of yoga from a commercialized “industrial complex” that has long favored “pearl clutching” over true spiritual authenticity.
Support From Dad, Mom, and Grandma
Taking control of their careers to pursue their cinematic dreams was not without its hardships.
“It can also be really lonely and isolating for people, I think, to pursue a path in the arts,” admits Kanish. Like other immigrant parents who worried about their children pursuing an unstable path in the arts, their parents had similar fears.
“But our parents knew how much we mean to each other and how effective we can be when we work together,” says Kanish. They supported their sons wholeheartedly. In fact, their grandmother, who is an acclaimed writer herself, recognized in her grandsons the drive that their father had for cardiology. “It never seemed like there would be any other path than in the film industry,” she observed.
The Power of Specificity
The brothers enjoy writing together – whether it’s scripts, emails, or texts. “We talk about the vocabulary and the syntax and the flow of the language,” says Kanish. “We like to wield language like it’s a toy or like a weapon,” because each word in the script matters.
Their focus on authenticity is evident in the script. Kanish explains that the main character Gayatri, “in her first appearance, she is dark-skinned, and this is extremely important to her character and to the movie. That’s also why her grandmother calls her mustard seed – kadugu.”
That’s also why Rish and Kanish are such big proponents of independent filmmaking. There’s a common belief that you have to wait for permission from the industry and that your film is only legitimate if it’s backed by a major agency or studio.
“It just comes down to sticking to the specificity of your own experience and believing that if you tell your story with enough specificity, then it will become universal and that people will relate to it,” says Rish.
The Young Masters
The brothers view themselves as classicists in some ways and futurists in other ways. They broke another filmmaking rule by hiring a very young crew, rather than seasoned veterans. These “young masters” included Rish (29) and Kanish (31).
“Because they were so young…. that buys you a lot of swings at the plate. You actually can achieve a lot more because nobody’s telling you otherwise,” says Rish.
The team included South Asian department heads that gave them a shared language on set. “The cinematographer, the composer, the lead hair and makeup artist, the costume designer, the production designer, the colorist,” explains Rish, “They would call out certain things in the script that were references to aesthetics or themes in Indian cinema, for example, and they would know exactly how to articulate those things.”
Using ‘masala’ as an entry point also helped the non-desi crew understand how different genres could be blended,
A Masala Movie Inspiration
Inspiration for their story came from the many Indian and American films that influenced their childhood – Lagaan, for its depiction of collective action in India, the original Karate Kid from the 80s, which popularized karate in America, and the Tamil movie Nayakan.
More recent influences include M.Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense, the Korean movie Parasite, the Malayalam movies Kumbalangi Nights and Drishyam, and significantly, Black Panther.
“The scale and the execution of that movie were impressive and the fact that the principal characters are black,” says Kanish. “It expanded what I thought was possible for a filmmaker who is a person of color.”
David and Goliath
In the film industry, says Kanish, filmmakers are often at the mercy of studios (the distributors) who wield influence over theaters (the exhibitors who showcase films).
“Theaters rely heavily on concession sales. This is why you see so much emphasis on popcorn, drinks, candy, and in-theater advertising.” Studios dictate terms around posters, trailers, and film placement, which theater chains accept because losing those films could put their business at risk. Studios and executives “do not care at all about art,” Kanish adds.
The brothers describe filmmaking as a David and Goliath situation. While they wrote, directed, and produced their own movie, it was an uphill battle to fight the studios for real estate at the theaters.
“I think the traditions of filmmaking and especially from Indian filmmaking that we are very dogged about preserving and one of those things is the idea of the poster as a piece of art,” says Rish.
Their aunt Swati hand-painted the poster for Namaslay, which was digitized and became “a really useful piece of marketing.”
“Getting our poster into the theaters, that’s a huge win,” says Kanish.
Multiplicity as the Fabric of Our Culture
For Kanish, one of the defining characteristics of Indian culture is its embrace of diversity and coexistence across different communities, traditions, and ways of life.
“I think that philosophy and that mindset is such a natural dovetail with the craft of filmmaking because filmmaking is the art form that combines all of the other art forms.”
In recent years, Korean film and culture have seen a major embrace in the West. The brothers believe there is a similar opportunity for Indian cinema to be discovered and appreciated by Western audiences.
Indians are the masters of the medium of film, says Kanish, and even though the West doesn’t quite understand yet, they soon will.
“So I think if we can in any meaningful way move that conversation ahead with Namaslay,” says Rish, they hope that it does invite people to explore more of the history of Indian cinema.
Namaslay will release in theaters in Los Angeles and New York City on Aug 6th and nationwide on August 13th. Tickets can be bought at Fandango.
