aboutthefilm sonder

sonder Sonder is a trilingual (in English, Hindi and Punjabi) mood piece about ordinariness of life and celebration of those who have this seemingly simple, regular and boring life - through a struggling musician, a grocery store owner, a couple volunteering at an arts foundation and a retired individual. A simple and quiet narrative, the film observes lives of these strangers and how their daily struggle affects their resolve, attempts to break their spirits and yet how each of these lives have a unique facet to them. SYNOPSIS Ever wonder that all those people who we walk past on the street, what must their lives really be like? A story about a day in life of 5 different old lives and how even those deceptively ordinary people have live lives worth celebrating. DIRECTOR Anuj Nijhawan grew up in Delhi and went to film school at USC in Los Angeles. After college, he moved up north to San Francisco where he works as a Product Manager in a startup. After writing films and dreaming about them for a while, Anuj decided to make a personal, coming-of-age story set in Silicon Valley. That film, According To Plan A (with Indian actor Ali Fazal in the lead), has traveled to and won accolades at international film festivals. He last helped produce a feature, For Here Or To Go, an existential drama set around legal immigration, featuring cast assembled from Bombay, LA, New York and San Francisco. PRODUCER Bhavjit Walha grew up in Chandigarh and went to school in San Diego before moving to the Bay Area to pursue engineering. He last produced the short According To Plan A with Anuj and is currently pursuing an MBA in London. DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT At the beginning of this year, I joined an Improv theater wherein a bunch of random, disparate individuals were clubbed together to form a ‘troupe’. While practicing with them for the next few months, I couldn’t stop thinking how all of them were regular, ordinary people, who had nothing to do with theater or acting in their everyday life. During the above experience, random nights hanging out at Washington Square Park in New York or random open mics in San Francisco, I kept coming across these insanely talented and enthusiastic individuals who all had two things in common apart from this hidden facet - that you could pass them in the street and not notice them at all. That they were the boring, regular, everyday people that we met on the streets and don’t even remember. Most of them weren’t full-time artists and some of them would even laugh at that tag or description. This film is an effort to celebrate that regular lives, boring lives, lives that seemingly have no drama, inherent conflicts and no clear motivations or goals. Often as filmmakers, we are looking to find the dramas, conflicts, goals and motivations - this time, it is celebrating normalness.

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sonder

Sonder is a trilingual (in English, Hindi and Punjabi) mood piece about ordinariness of life and celebration of those who have this seemingly simple, regular and boring life - through a struggling musician, a grocery store owner, a couple volunteering at an arts foundation and a retired individual.

A simple and quiet narrative, the film observes lives of these strangers and how their daily struggle affects their resolve, attempts to break their spirits and yet how each of these lives have a unique facet to them.

SYNOPSIS

Ever wonder that all those people who we walk past on the street, what must their lives really be like? Astory about a day in life of 5 different old lives and how even those deceptively ordinary people have livelives worth celebrating.

DIRECTORAnuj Nijhawan grew up in Delhi and went to film school at USC in Los Angeles. After college, he moved up north to San Francisco where he works as a Product Manager in a startup. After writing films and dreaming about them for a while, Anuj decided to make a personal, coming-of-age story set in Silicon Valley. That film, According To Plan A (with Indian actor Ali Fazal in the lead), has traveled to and won accolades at international film festivals. He last helped produce a feature, For Here Or To Go, an existential drama set around legal immigration, featuring cast assembled from Bombay, LA, New York and San Francisco.

PRODUCERBhavjit Walha grew up in Chandigarh and went to school in San Diego before moving to the Bay Area to pursue engineering. He last produced the short According To Plan A with Anuj and is currently pursuing an MBA in London.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENTAt the beginning of this year, I joined an Improv theater wherein a bunch of random, disparate individualswere clubbed together to form a ‘troupe’. While practicing with them for the next few months, I couldn’tstop thinking how all of them were regular, ordinary people, who had nothing to do with theater or acting intheir everyday life.

During the above experience, random nights hanging out at Washington Square Park in New York orrandom open mics in San Francisco, I kept coming across these insanely talented and enthusiasticindividuals who all had two things in common apart from this hidden facet - that you could pass them inthe street and not notice them at all. That they were the boring, regular, everyday people that we met onthe streets and don’t even remember. Most of them weren’t full-time artists and some of them would evenlaugh at that tag or description.

This film is an effort to celebrate that regular lives, boring lives, lives that seemingly have no drama,inherent conflicts and no clear motivations or goals. Often as filmmakers, we are looking to find thedramas, conflicts, goals and motivations - this time, it is celebrating normalness.