For me, the very fact that The Disciple exists is success, says Chaitanya Tamhane

After making its way to film festivals around the world, Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple (2021) is now available globally on Netflix. The Marathi film about the decade-long journey of a classical vocalist, Sharad Nerulkar (Aditya Modak), won the Best Screenplay award and the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at Venice last year.

Now that the film is on Netflix, Tamhane and his producer Vivek Gomber spoke about its making in an interview with the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). The writer-director spoke of the toughest scene to shoot, where Sharad loses his cool with a condescending music critic.

“The scene with the critic at the rooftop bar, because that’s a very very crucial scene in the film,” Tamhane explained. “You know, it almost comes in the third act of the film. Of course, it was logistically difficult, but it was also difficult in the sense that you know what Sharad goes through in that scene, the emotion that he experiences and that final outburst of emotions he has... and this critic is this new character who has come in the end and is kind of in a way destroying Sharad’s world.”

Gomber spoke about the impact the late filmmaker Sumitra Bhave’s voice makes to the film. “Something that resonates and is haunting forever is Mai’s voice... and it is really unfortunate that Sumitraji passed away and I didn’t get to interact with her. If you don’t have Mai, you don’t have that voice,” he said, adding that the sequences involving her gave him goosebumps.

Asked about The Disciple’s success, Tamhane said, “For me, the very fact that the film just exists is success, the very fact that not just me but an entire community got to come together, and thanks to Vivek and his vision and his resources, that we got to engage in an uncompromised process, which is not guided by commercial factors, which is not committee filmmaking, which is not guided by algorithms."

The Disciple is the second time Gomber and Tamhane have collaborated after Court (2015). Watch the full interview here.