Cactus Pears | Rohan Parashuram Kanawade | IND, GBR, CAN | 112'

Rohan Kanawade’s debut feature is an LGBTQIA+ romantic drama about forbidden love, offering further proof of the vitality of Indian cinema. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in the World Cinema category. Anand leaves Mumbai, forced to spend ten days mourning his father’s death in rural India. There, he faces mounting pressure from relatives to get married, and begins to feel suffocated — coming out to his extended family could alienate his mother from the support she needs most.

Winner of two awards at the Cairo Film Festival, including the Critics' Award, Spring Came on Laughing is one of the biggest surprises of the year. The film presents a series of situations in which Egyptian women reveal their deepest secrets and anxieties, in a narrative that is both liberating and empowering, as well as terrifying. A triumph for a new filmmaker, Noha Adel, who will surely continue to make waves in the future.

Anand (30), a call-center employee in Mumbai, is forced to spend ten days at his ancestral
village to mourn the loss of his father at the behest of his mother, Suman (50).
As the mourning period begins post-cremation, he faces subtle but relentless badgering
from relatives to get married so that at least his mother finds the pleasure of seeing him
settled. Anand finds himself stifled, as coming out to extended family could alienate his
mother from the relatives when she needs them the most.
He finds solace in his childhood friend, Balya (30), as he accompanies him on his daily
outings into the mountains to herd goats. Balya has been using the ‘educated girls favoring
city-dwellers over farmers’ as a ruse to stay unmarried as he undergoes similar pressures
relating to his sexuality from his family.
To escape their pressures, the two men spend time together. Hailing from different worlds
but bound by childhood memories, they connect over their common struggle. As the days
pass, their intimacy blooms emotionally and physically. With the mourning period ending, will their burgeoning bond survive beyond the ten days?
Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) explores the delicate bonds that develop under duress and the future of it.