Director Sudhanshu Saria And Shiv Pandit On ‘Loev,’ Gay Life In India, SXSW [EXCLUSIVE VIDEO]

Sudhanshu Saria wrote and directed the film Loev screeeing this week at SXSW, which stars Bollywood leading man Shiv Pandit as a gay Wall Street banker, who ends up falling for an old pal and consequently becomes embroiled in a love triangle.

Sudhanshu Saria & Shiv Pandit On ‘Loev’

Saria started writing the script for Loev as a way of coping with his own relationship woes. He wrote it with the freedom of someone who thought that he’d be the only one to see his work. The emotional honestly of Loev ended up proving to be what made it attractive to producers and actors, including Pandit.

“It came out of heartbreak. Instead of going to a strip club or drinking with my buddies or a therapist, I wrote about it. I think I was able to be honest and vulnerable only because I didn’t think the film would even get made,” Saria told uInterview in an exclusive interview. But, “People came forward, and production companies came forward and actors came forward, and people like Shiv, who’ve actually had tremendous success working in mainstream cinema, who looked at this and said, ‘You know what? I identify with this. I think it’s something we should get made.'”

Pandit explained that it was Saria’s script for Loev that drew him to the project. It was relatable, it was apolitical, and it had a depth to its simplicity.

“As an actor you read a lot of scripts and when Sudhanshu’s script came to me, what really leapt out of the script for me was that there was no agenda. It wasn’t agenda-driven. There was no political context to it,” said Pandit. “It was just a simple love story, which happened to be about men. Another thing that really interested me about the script was that the gender in the script really did not matter, you could literally replace the characters with another gender…. It was so deceivingly simple, yet it had a deeper meaning to it.”

While Loev screened at SXSW and has screened at other festivals around the world, it hasn’t screened in India, where it was filmed. With how movies are pre-screened and censored in India, both Saria and Pandit fear that scenes will be chopped from it, leaving a product that lacks the essence of the movie that they made together.

“I have not been worried about the film being screened in any other country in the world. And I’m literally freaked out about this film being screened in my own country, only because I just want it to land on the right foot with the audience and the government and the censor control,” said Pandit.

Saria added, “I think we’re also very possessive about the film. We want it to be presented in the way that it is. It’s honestly nothing anti-seditious, there’s nothing in it, it’s just a nice love story. […] It’s a progressive film for the modern Indian, but one can never predict what the authorities do so we just hope they look at us for who we are rather than based preconceived notions on our agendas. ”

Pandit believes that interest in the film is growing in India, and Saria senses that those who are eager to see Loev will find a way to see it whether or not the complete film is ever officially released in the country. No matter what happens down the road with the film, Saria is proud to have made Loev, and is hopeful that it will encourage other filmmakers to push the boundaries of storytelling in India.

“I think even if [Loev] does a little bit to move the needle and encourage other filmmakers who are thinking of telling stories like this to step up, I think that’s a huge step in the right direction,” Saria told uInterview. “I think the fact that the film’s been made, the fact that the characters have been treated with dignity, it’s a huge win for the LGBTQ community back home that is starved of dignified, realistic representations of their own culture, on the big screen.”