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.

Anand, the sole surviving child, has returned to his home village in rural India for his father's funeral. As a relatively rich city boy, this 30-year-old is a very eligible bachelor, and could easily have his pick of young women with no older unmarried sisters. However, he is gay, and while he dreads questions about his unmarried status, he is persuaded to stay for the full 10-day mourning period. Only his parents know he is gay, and his mother has already spun his loss of a lover (to marriage) as a girl cheating on him and breaking his heart.

He meets up with his childhood friend (cousin?) Balya, who is also gay, and whose gay experiences are limited to quick sex-by-appointments with members of the gay underground. With a preference of parents for boys, there is a gender imbalance of marriage-age singles, and Balya (who milks cows, herds goats, and occasionally drives cars for a living) is hoping that his relative poverty keeps him single. But no luck - some girl is actually interested in him, trying to get in touch thru his sister.

The two form a relationship, with Anand joining Balya on his daily work at times. Cultural rules about being in mourning include only eating two meals a day, and only snacking on fruit in between. One day, Balya leaves Anand some rare cactus pears he has foraged - fruit whose defensive spikes have to be removed before eating.

Maybe not to Indian audiences, but I found fascinating all the rules and rituals of Indian funerals and marriage. There was a early dispute over who should light the funeral pyre - Anand is the closest relative but is unmarried, but there is a cousin who is married. There is also a rule about eschewing footwear, and concern about Anand following Balya herding goats, possibly burning his feet going barefoot on the sun-baked ground (even though it is winter).

I saw this at the Inside Out film festival, preceded by a director's introduction on video. He mentioned that this is somewhat autobiographical, and somewhat softened from his personal experiences. Even though that would have been decades ago, I shudder at the thought of the negative interactions.

I had the opportunity to see the film at the Guadalajara International Film Festival, and I approached Rohan, the director, to congratulate him. It won the Maguey Award for Best Film, and had previously won the Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Based on his own personal experience, he shares a story with a calming, yet moving and wonderful pace, about grief and human connections.

Both lead actors (who have been friends in real life since they were students) convey pain, longing, emotion, and love in a simple yet powerful way.

You have to see it. It was an honor to see this film at the festival.