Cactus Pears

Watched at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

A beautiful and quiet story about grief, queer isolation, and family bonds crafted by Rohan Kanawade. Kanawade displays beautiful camerawork, sound designs, and simple, yet, realistic dialogue dynamics between the characters that perfectly establishes the themes of gay identity, family relations, how to deal with loss, and the Indian culture that surrounds the environment. It's quiet and realistic approach provides a slow-burn emotional journey on observing the characters going through the moments of life in several days, which offers a great study and observation.

The nature environment and approach Kanawade presents is brilliant. I love romance movies that offers an emotional and realistic portray of bonds, society and people, and Kanawade understands that. Offering realistic performances, dialogue, and some really heartbreaking moments hits too close to home for me.

For a first debut, Kanawade rocked it.