Four Nights from director Deepak Rauniyar and his co-screenwriter and female lead Asha Magrati is a personal film. It comes from their personal story and the struggles, sacrifices, and negotiations they’ve had to make as a couple and as filmmakers. Particularly, independent filmmakers who overcame the caste systems of their home country to pursue their dreams.
We meet Ram (played by Dayahang Rai) as he edits a film. In the scene he’s editing, the female lead says, “Well, I wanted to see you too.” Ram focuses on this clip, and this is our first introduction to Maya (played by Asha Magrati), who we will discover is his wife. The place they are staying in is nice. So, your first impression is the film will be about successful or privileged filmmakers. That notion is quickly squashed. They are house sitting, and the homeowners will be coming back soon, this accommodation is temporary, and it’s almost over.
Ram and Maya present the two sides of independent filmmakers. Ram is the sacrifice everything for his art type. Take on debt, betting that eventually they will get success, get the grant. He doesn’t work day jobs. He’s a filmmaker full stop. Maya, his lead actor, is more pragmatic, she doesn’t want to stop pursuing the dream, but she wants to make sure the means to do so are possible, even if that means taking other jobs (like nannying). The fact they are married and have these disparate approaches puts them at odds.
At the crux of the conflict is Maya has a job offer to nanny for a family, one that will require her to spend four nights a week staying over, four nights a week she and Ram won’t spend together. This hits Ram especially hard as they fought so hard to be together (implications of Nepal’s caste system). So much so he wavers on filmmaking to try and keep them together.
Filmmaking is hard. Independent filmmaking is especially hard as filmmakers compete to get their films into prestigious festivals in hopes of getting distribution/screens afterward where they can recoup some of their costs. Getting into these festivals isn’t a guarantee, and many of them have expectations on appearance even if they know the filmmakers don’t have money, as alluded to in this film.
This film rings true because it’s true. Deepak Rauniyar is an acclaimed filmmaker. His second feature White Sun played in multiple festivals, won awards, and was Nepal’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. If the inspiration for this film was just of their financial and personal struggles before this modicum of success, that would’ve been one thing, but the inspiration spans much longer than that as Asha worked whatever jobs she could find while Deepak financed and finished his first film Highway, the aforementioned White Sun, and the upcoming The Sky Is Mine.
We leave the film feeling for the filmmaker that keeps coming back to the scene of his wife in a film of his own making repeating, “Well, I just wanted to see you too.” The weight of that line greater each time it’s repeated.
Four Nights premiered at the 72nd annual Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).