Anand, the hero of Cactus Pears, never shakes off the sleepy look that he sports in the first shot, when the film wakes him up so it can begin. This thirty-something city resident has just lost his father and returns to his village for the ten-day mourning period, where the reunion with his childhood friend Balya also awakens him, gently. In this family community obsessed and haunted by the dictate that all should marry, the herds tended by Balya are the silent witnesses, not to the transgression of a prohibition, but rather to a slow self-assertiveness, to the unexpected and comforting opening-up of spaces for understanding, including those where that are no longer expected.
Aisha Rahim
First feature film · Preview screening
