Natesh Hegde’s ‘Tiger’s Pond’ (Vagachipani), which world-premiered at the Berlinale, is an impressive follow-up to ‘Pedro’

The director’s second film stars Achyuth Kumar, Dileesh Pothan. It is the first Kannada feature to be selected for the Berlin Film Festival, and it contains many of the themes (class, caste, man vs nature) we saw in his debut. The rest of this review contains spoilers.

Natesh Hegde follows up Pedro with Tiger’s Pond (Vagachipani), and the two films are companion pieces. Both are set in a village by the Western Ghats, and are shot by Vikas Urs in a manner that makes it a point to not exoticize these locations. (In other words, the extraordinary is rendered ordinary, like how it would seem to someone who has always lived there, as opposed to an awestruck tourist.) Both films feature a master-servant equation, along with observations on caste and class hierarchies. (Again, this is all presented to us as though it has always existed, and not as something that “kicks off a plot”.) Both films include wild animals (a boar there, tigers here) and godly rituals. If Pedro showed us a statue of Ganesha being immersed during a festival as observed by a social outcast, we get a goddess here with green bangles, who’s first seen amidst wild reeds and slowly slips into a pond. This goddess, too, is observed by a sort of outcast.

You can read the rest of the review here:

https://www.galattaplus.com/natesh-hegdes-tigers-pond-vagachipani-which-world-premiered-at-the-berlinale-is-an-impressive-follow-up-to-pedro/

You can watch the trailer / video review here:

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