Reclaiming the witch: How Assamese director Bhargav Saikia's new film aims to change the narrative

Inspired by the powerful mythical figure of Lamlamey, in Bokshi, Saikia and writer Harsh Vaibhav wanted to represent the witch as a symbol of empowerment

I'm getting inclined to featuring women as the principal characters of my stories. This is happening naturally; I somehow feel that I can portray women a little better than men," Assamese director Bhargav Saikia tells us over the phone. Saikia, whose debut directorial feature Bokshi ("witch" in Nepali) will have its World Premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) this week, has crafted a story that weaves together myth and history, combining supernatural and ecofeminist elements and incorporating the beliefs, practices and violence around witchcraft prevalent in the deep forests of Sikkim where the film is set.

During their travels through Dzongu in North Sikkim to lay the groundwork for the story, Saikia and writer Harsh Vaibhav got acquainted with the local traditions and culture of the Lepchas, and their nature-worshipping and shamanism practices. They also learnt about a mythical female entity named Lamlamey who is believed to impart knowledge about shamanism to prospective candidates and is, notably, more powerful than her male counterpart. "That particular aspect of the female being in power-taking decisions while transforming a person into a shaman stayed with us," says the director. "And then [on the other hand], there are witch hunts still occurring in different parts of the country that are built on a culture of misogyny and patriarchy… we wanted to subvert the idea of the ‘witch', which in society has a negative connotation. We wanted to represent Bokshi the ‘witch' as a symbol of empowerment."

Bhargav Saikia

River activist Gyatso Lepcha, a well-known figure in Sikkim who also runs a homestay in North Sikkim, and who the director had approached on Facebook about five years ago, became the team's unofficial guide through the region. "It was one of the most pristine and peaceful places I'd ever been to," recalls Saikia. "I remember crossing this particular bridge from which you could see the ‘Welcome to North Sikkim' signboard. I might be a little dramatic here, but as I crossed the bridge, it felt like I had gone through a portal and entered a different world. That moment influenced me heavily and, in the film, when the school group reaches the forest, I wanted to create a similar effect of going into a different world altogether."

Saikia, who hails from the town of Biswanath Chariali in Assam and later spent his years at the Assam Valley School, mentions a variety of inspirations that spurred his interest in fantastical stories, from the local folktales featured in the Lakshminath Bezbaruah-compiled Burhi Aai'r Xaadhu (Grandmother's Tales) to the western influences of Roald Dahl, the Harry Potter books, JRR Tolkien and 90s' horror staples like the Zee Horror Show from the Ramsay stables. "These stories of fantasy and horror enabled me to leave behind reality for a bit. Real life may not be as exciting as a fictional fantastical world where I could be with myself and think about things which might not be possible in real life," shares the director. His interest in fictional worlds has also evidently inspired the creation of Boksirit - a fictional language presented as the progenitor of all modern languages created for the film by Dutch linguist Jan van Steenbergen. "Our main brief was that it had to sound like it comes from the Indian subcontinent, and since it is in a way the first language spoken on earth, it had to sound rough," Saikia tells us.

Saikia's previous filmic experiments - short films Awakenings and The Black Cat - have also concerned themselves with themes and stylistic elements that he expands on in Bokshi, like the imitative nature of dreams and reality, paranoia and the iconography of witchcraft. Films like Suspiria, both the old and the new, "with their striking visual language and representation of the witches' coven," Ari Aster's Midsommar, "a horror film set almost entirely in daylight," and Robert Eggers's The Witch have been inspirations, he says. "These are horror filmmakers who have brought a new visual language to the genre through their craft. It is an alternate form of making a horror film which is becoming more and more popular with younger audiences," the director tells us.

Within the Indian context, he observes that because horror comedies have been doing well of late, "people have suddenly woken up to this genre… [As a result], horror is no longer considered a ‘B-grade' genre in our country, which is really nice for filmmakers like me." He believes that his film's "rooted" aspect will ensure a wider appeal and hopes that the film's acceptance will encourage other young filmmakers from the Northeast to tell their stories. "Of course, there's Rima Das and Bhaskar Hazarika, but there are younger filmmakers from the region who are also immensely talented."