Guest Feature| Unravelling Film at Ashoka with Dhagein

Tucked away in a cosy classroom on a cold November night, writer-director Vedika Khanna’s (ASP’25) film Dhagein, offered a welcome warmth. For fifty-nine captivating minutes, moments of laughter would ripple through the crowd, as students held on to every dialogue, every frame.

On my way back to the library, I overheard recurring words used to describe Dhagein – heartfelt, simple and tender.

A Story of Love

From the very first scene, Dhagein pulls its audience in, with Khanna masterfully juggling tension and humor. The story follows Kamini (Ananya Rajaram, ASP ’25), who returns to college after an accident that leaves her with a gap in memory. Now a second-year student, Kamini must navigate campus all over again.

The film opens with Kamini reassuring her worried mother over the phone before taking a moment to readjust to the familiar yet distant campus. The music swells, the tension builds, until her friends Priya and Meera, (Chaitanya Nair, ASP ’25, Trisha Khandelwal, UG ’27), now third-years, welcome her back and the tension is eased with friendly banter. This push and pull between building tension and diffusing it with humour seems to be Khanna’s forte. The film eases in and out of this, making its emotional rhythm engaging and real. 

As Kamini faces the realities of disremembering, like forgetting a favourite movie or wistfully staring at spots around campus, she finds herself drawn to a mysterious girl, Saira (Samhitha Shankar, ASP ‘25). Saira and Kamini strike a friendship that results in the eventual unravelling of past secrets. Saira does not tell Kamini of their earlier, apparently failed romance, and the two begin to build a new bond for themselves. 

The early stages of a budding romance are portrayed with a subtle charm – glances between library shelves and quiet exchanges on the lawns. Rajaram and Shankar’s chemistry is palpable, with intimate, often funny moments tucked between book pages, making it easy to root for them as a couple. Khanna directs our eyes across the screen smoothly with her simple shots achieving the flirtatiousness that these scenes intend. Minimal dialogue lets the excitement of this new romance take centre stage. Just when you begin questioning Saira’s intentions, Noor (Arayna Dasgupta ASP ‘25), the goofy best friend, is introduced, who acts as the film’s moral compass. 

Fate and memory loss can often feel slightly amateur, if not naive concepts. I must admit I was a bit sceptical at first; afraid that the film might take too cheesy or dramatic a turn. But Khanna’s writing is grounded and assured – her dialogues flow so naturally, it is hard not to get pulled in completely. 

Behind the Lens

Dhagein, is Khanna’s first time working on a film and holding a camera. The understated cinematography, characterised by simple, often amateur-looking shots is revealing of this. But the rawness of such direction aids the film’s sincerity. 

Longer shots and lesser cuts lends to more moments of sitting with the character’s and their emotions. When Kamini and Saira fight in the latter’s dorm room, it felt like a room we have all been in before. There is a passive-aggressiveness that takes over the conversation, leaving the couple unhappy and frustrated. The camera remains stagnant on each of them as they do not say a word to each other, capturing that quiet, nagging feeling quite beautifully. 

Later, a sustained-two shot that rests on the final conversation between Kamini and Saira may seem unpolished at first, but it added a rawness that made me feel like I was intruding on their private space. I found myself forgiving, often not even taking notice, of inconsistencies in lighting and exposure. 

Some scenes in Dhagein do run for too long with the couple’s conversation stretched out beyond necessary dialogues. Both the leads take control of this to the best of their abilities. Shankar shines in this role, navigating both softness and anger. While Rajaram brings a tenderness to Kamini that is a refreshing role to see her play after her stint of theatre acting in The Green Room’s Shikhandi and Hungama. Both lead actors are commendable and natural. 

The Sound of Music

While some moments feel stretched out, especially in the third act, the soundtrack helped re-centre the audience. A string and piano-heavy score runs throughout the film, with almost no moments of complete silence. This helped with longer sequences involving Kamini and Saira that could have lost audience attention. The music, composed by Samarth Gollapudi, Assistant Director Anshula Tiwari’s (UG’27) friend from outside Ashoka, grounds the film the most. Intentionally baked into the story, since both Kamini and Saira play the piano, it remained understated but also brought out the dramatic, comical and heartbreaking moments when needed.

Audio, which was handled and edited by Tiwari and Khanna is clear and crisp, one of the biggest plus points of the film. Most films on campus still struggle with audio, often having to dub over dialogues for intelligibility. Both Tiwari and Khanna demonstrate an attention to detail with no noticeable dubs and smartly placed microphones, that ensured seamless sound.

Female Filmmakers & Ashoka

This semester has seen a plethora of films being screened on campus, from fifteen-minute shorts to long-length features. The Media Lab has been a hotspot of activity, its equipment constantly booked out by students. Campus, too, has been buzzing with students carrying cameras and lighting equipment across the library lawns. Khayal’s Production Showcase opened on 24th September, and by Halloween, the web series Bombay returned with a special episode. Ashoka Film Fataka saw two feature length films screened over a weekend, bringing to campus more genres to experiment with. This Tuesday, the author's own short film, Oysters was screened and another short film, Partners in Crime will be screened tomorrow (Friday). It is clear that the momentum sparked in the film community by the feature film You Missed a Potential Match last spring (and its rescreening earlier this week) continues to inspire. 

When Khanna and I met earlier in the semester to discuss her project, I realised this was the first time I was talking to a fellow female writer and director., Like many creative spaces, filmmaking at Ashoka is largely male-dominated. This makes Khanna’s all female cast and crew (with the exception of music), something of a milestone. When asked how this dynamic influenced the process, Khanna and actor Shankar stressed that it was unintentional. Instead, they spoke of the collaborative spirit that emerged organically, making it easier for the team to connect with one another and with the script.

Although Dhagein looks at a relationship between two women, it does not lean into an overtly “LGBTQ+” film. It remains at its core, an exploration of love and heartbreak. Neither does it address the queerness of the relationship or have it be a point of discussion amongst the characters’ friends. This works because of the film’s willingness to lean into Ashoka’s residential setting which allows us to deal with this love within the campus’ little bubble. 

A common critique of student films is the believability of their world – student actors struggling to play adults or stories set in college ignoring everyday experiences like lounging on the lawns or eating at the mess. Often, I find myself thinking, “Don’t they have assignments to work on?” But Dhagein sidesteps these pitfalls. The film’s portrayal of college life feels lived-in and real, balancing the emotional depth of its story with the smaller, familiar details of campus life.

When Life Writes the Script

Some viewers have critiqued the simplicity of Khanna’s writing, claiming “realistic” stories are “easy” to translate to film. Khanna disagrees –  “I don’t know how to write if it’s not personal. If I learn from life, then so be it.” And indeed, Dhagein succeeds precisely because it feels like a personal culmination of the whole team’s experiences. It also stands out in recent Ashoka film history because it is a refreshing change from complex storytelling that often feels like it lacks heart. Khanna also was quite open to actors becoming a part of the writing process, where shared inputs and interpretations shaped the film into what it is today. “And so the personal became universal. Of course, every pain you’ve felt, everyone else has felt it too.”, Khanna tells me. 

There is much to learn from Dhagein, but most importantly it is that if there is a story to be told, it can be done. Khanna’s first time holding a camera, setting up microphones and editing a film is a commendable job in itself, and a successful one at that! This is especially inspiring for first-time filmmakers – particularly first-time female filmmakers – who might hesitate to pick up a camera for film, fearing its technicalities. With incredible access to camera, light and sound equipment and an always helpful Media Lab, it is hopeful that more students try out new mediums of storytelling. Khanna’s work serves as a reminder that it is alright to start small, to tell stories that are meaningful to you, and to learn as you go. For now, she returns to the edit table to make some more cuts for film festivals. 

As both audience and a filmmaker, I hope this marks the beginning of more stories from her and films in Ashoka at large.

Sara Pandey is a fourth-year student at Ashoka University. She is also a filmmaker and has directed two short films - Oysters and Partners in Crime.

(Edited by Giya Sood and Srijana Siri)