Boong: Schoolboy Boong (Gugun Kipgen) doesn’t see long distances and state borders as significant obstacles. At least not when it comes to giving his mother, Mandakini (Bala Hijam), the best surprise gift ever: bringing back his father, Joykumar (Hamom Sadananda).

After leaving their home city of Manipur, India for the border city of Moreh, near Myanmar, in search of better job opportunities, Joykumar has stopped communications with the family. With rumors spreading about his father’s death, Boong refuses to accept that grim possibility. So he teams up with his best friend, Raju (Angom Sanamatum), an outsider from Rajasthan, to search for the truth.

The two boys embark on a risky journey, armed only with a photo and a strong belief in the magical power of music to bring Joykumar back. Although they encounter many challenges, their unwavering friendship and determination shine through.

Director: Lakshmipriya Devi

Screenwriter: Lakshmipriya Devi

Original Language: Manipuri

Runtime: 1h 34 m

Boong made its World Premiere in the Discovery and TIFF Next Wave Selects sections of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Q: You wrote the script for the new drama, Boong. What was your inspiration in penning the screenplay for the movie?

Lakshmipriya Devi: I love writing, but I never thought I would like get to direct. There was a period when I stopped working for a few years to take care of my father and aunt. I was completely away from the whole world of movies.

I used to work as a first assistant director. But there was a time that I reconnected back with my family in a very deep way, as well as with the place I come from.

There was this childhood story, which was always there, about a missing great grandfather. He wasn’t really missing, but he was absentee. He was in exile in Myanmar. I used to always wonder about him and make up stories in my head about him when I was small.

That was the first starting point. I think it’s because you always want to know where your forefathers are when you’re trying to find out who you are. So that was the very beginning of me working on the script.

I wrote it like I was just pouring my memory of Manipur, as a sort of a cathartic experience. I wasn’t really intending it for it to be a film. So it was completely without expectations. I just wrote like I was possessed, and I just wanted it out of my system.

So it became a script in the vein of my grandmother’s folk tales., which was something that always comforted me when I was small. This film became like –like I could be telling a child this story, like how she used to tell me her stories.

Q: Besides scribing the script, you also made your feature film directorial debut on the project, like you mentioned. How did writing the screenplay influence your helming style on set?

Lakshmipriya Devi: Like I said, this was like my memory of Manipur. I felt like everything that has do with the film, creative-wise, was to evoke. my childhood memories. That related to how it would look like, in terms of locations. I wanted to be as close to those memories as possible.

Secondly, like I’ve mentioned. I’ve been a first assistant director for so long. People might not believe it, but it’s extremely stressful job. Directing is a completely different job skill. But, I found it less stressful. I was answerable only to myself.

I also had to be happy with what I was doing. So I had to take the full responsibility of everything that was happening, and that freed me in a way.

When you start doing something like which only you want to do, and you don’t have to ask 100 people, that was liberating. The whole film, whether I was writing it or making it, was a great experience.

Q: Boong stars Gugun Kipgen in the titular role. What was the cast process like for the drama?

There’s not a structured casting system in movies in Manipur. I mean, of course you can give a casting call on social media and stuff like that.

But there are not too many child actors. So it was more of me asking people if they knew of any child actors who fit the prototype of the character. So we were passing the word around.

I found the main boy, Gugun Kipgen, through a distance relative, who had come to be interviewed for the production job. She was having an interview with a producer, and I was like, the job interview can wait. Do you know a child?

So everyone who came to meet us, I would ask them, do you know a child who can play the character. I would tell them, I’m looking for this ery naughty kid, and that’s how I got Boong!

So it was mainly passing the word around. There was no structured process. I would be roaming around in my neighborhood and see kids playing or play acting, I would have them audition.

But the crucial thing about the casting of the kids was that all of the kids, not just one boy, had to be kids who I could speak to as a friend. I didn’t want to just treat them like a kid – they had to be some I could have a conversation with in whatever possible way.

So I lucked out on that, because I could have a conversation with all the kids – not just Gugun, but also Angom Sanamatum! They were fearless and very confident. They had never faced the camera ever before, but they did their best.

Q: Once the actors were cast, how did you approach working with to build the characters and story in the movie?

Lakshmipriya Devi: The only people I gave the script to were Gugun’s mother and the actress who played his character’s mother.

But with the kids. I took them through the story. But I didn’t tell Gugun the ending at all. I only told him about the story until the scene where the concert happens. I just wanted to see how he would react.

So I just did these really informal meetings with the kids. We would sit down with me at my house and play different scenes. I would say, “Okay, this is a situation. What would you do?”

Then I took them to the set. We had a couple of days in the real locations, where I needed Gugun to feel that this was his house as Boong. In real life, he comes from the city and we shot in the village. So I wanted both the mother and the son to feel that they live in that house.

I had the mother set up her own bed. She would lay the things in her room as her character as she would in real life.

After that, when the shoot actually happened, I didn’t really have to tell them what to do that much. The mother is a season actress. So with her, I didn’t have to work much, but.

I asked them, “This is a situation. How would you react? How would you feel?” What was fun about asking them, “What would you feel?” was that their reaction was a spontaneous, organic process. I was quite surprised with some of the stuff that the kids came up with on their own.

Q: In the film, after Boong’s father leaves their home city of Manipur, India for the border city of Moreh, near Myanmar, in search of better job opportunities. The titular character decides to leave home to search for the truth. How did you approach shooting on location?

Lakshmipriya Devi: Like I said, I saw it as my memory. The villages now, in present day, are not as remote, and the environment looks slightly different. So I went to about four or five districts of Manipur, and I combed the villages.

I found this one village where we eventually shot. It just had. bamboo trees. So what we showed on screen was what it was like in real life. There were a lot of bamboo groves. So you could just the wind blowing.

So that’s how I found the place. We didn’t have a location person who went scouting. So I just went with a friend. I said, “We’ll just go around,” and that’s what we did. We roamed around, which actually helped in the in our research of how people lived.

It was an interesting location scouting process – I would go into the homes, and the people who lived there weren’t there sometimes. They don’t shut their gates and doors, so you can just walk in. So they might not be there, but you can walk into the house.

So to reflect that, I didn’t want the doors to be shut in my film, either, unless it’s night.

All the locations are live locations. One location I want to especially mention about is where we had the first song of the character who plays JJ (Jenny Khurai). That used to be a cinema hall in Manipur, but it got shut down after the ban on Hindi films. So it was very important for me to film there.

It was my personal tribute, and I really wanted to film there. The upper seats were from the seats of the Japanese Dakota planes which were shot down during World War II – Manipur was a battlefield between Japan and the UK.

So for me, it meant so much to shoot there. For somebody watching the film, it might not mean something.

But every place I’ve shot I wanted to have significance, including the shop. It was actually owned by a family that came from Rajasthan in 1914. Interacting with the family there, and seeing how much it meant for them, was amazing.

I wanted to make a special mention of another location, which is where we shot the mother’s market. It’s actually a very busy place to shoot, because it’s super crowded. But it’s Asia’s, or maybe even the world’s, largest market run only by women – 5,000 women sit there and sell.

So I wanted to place the mother character there in that environment. She’s a very strong woman, and that market is known for having all these strong women who have shaped history.

Q: Boong had its World Premiere in the Discovery and TIFF Next Wave Selects this month at the Toronto International Film Festival. What does it mean to you that the drama premiered at the festival?

Lakshmipriya Devi: Firstly, it was unbelievable. It still didn’t sink in until I arrived (in Toronto). I just saw this whole environment. There were little pop-up tents down the street, so I felt like I was back in a campus.

With so many film lovers, I saw so many people standing in line in a queue from six or seven in the morning. So it was just amazing. I even forgot that my film was in the festival for a moment – I got so excited as just as an audience.

To be selected at TIFF is a huge deal, especially for a film like mine – it’s set also in a place which is rarely represented, and nobody knows about it. So they didn’t know what to expect or what is the film is about.

The audience reactions went beyond my expectation. You don’t expect that the film would relate to somebody on a personal level. So it’s been a great surprise.