Whispers of the Mountains, Jigar Nagda’s sophomore feature film, explores the fragile balance between survival and environmental destruction in a village nestled in the rugged Aravalli hills. The narrative follows a widowed tea stall owner, Tilak, who struggles to survive with his mute son, Raghu — a 12-year-old who shares a quiet, instinctive bond with the mountains, even as mining erodes both land and livelihoods. Blending unflinching human drama with unvarnished realism, Nagda’s film captures the often-overlooked struggles for survival faced by those on the margins in rural India, where life hurls one punishing challenge after another.

Whispers of the Mountains was selected for the Indian Panorama spotlight at the International Film Festival of India and was also featured in the Indian Language Competition at the 2025 Kolkata International Film Festival. In this interview, Nagda discusses blending human drama with environmental realities, working with professional and non-professional actors, and the challenges of navigating regional independent cinema.

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Dipankar Sarkar: Your debut feature, A Boy Who Dreamt of Electricity (2024), as well as Whispers of the Mountains, are rooted in social realities where people at the lower rungs of society bear the cost of larger systems. How do you keep the realities you depict grounded in lived human experience rather than turning them into a statement or slogan?

Jigar Nagda: I have spent most of my life in Mumbai, but after completing my education, traveling through rural India became an important part of my life. I often stayed in villages for extended periods and began visiting my native village — Kheda in [the] Udaipur district of Rajasthan — more frequently. Living closely with people there allowed me to observe and feel the rhythms of rural life firsthand.

During these journeys, I encountered many quiet, simple and deeply moving stories. They are not dramatic in a loud or obvious way, but they linger and stay with you long after. For me, cinema begins from that place. I never start with the intention of making a social statement or delivering a message; I begin with a human experience that refuses to leave me.

When a story stays within me, it feels as though it is asking to be told. That emotional pull is what drives me to turn it into a film. As I engage more deeply with a subject, layers of pain, hope, silence and resilience reveal themselves, all rooted in real, lived lives.

I am not driven by ideology or slogans. What moves me is emotional truth. If a story touches me deeply, I feel a responsibility to give it a voice through cinema. For me, reality becomes cinema through empathy — through listening and honoring lived experience.

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DS: You first explored marble quarrying in Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district through your documentary Aravali: The Lost Mountains (2022), and you return to the same landscape in Whispers of the Mountains. What is it about the Aravallis that continues to demand attention from you?

JN: Aravali: The Lost Mountains began as a short documentary, but even before making it, I had the desire to explore the subject as a fiction film. At the time, however, I didn’t yet know how to approach it. I hadn’t found a human story through which I could truly express what was happening to these mountains as they disappeared day by day.

I wanted to speak about mining not only as an act of destruction, but also as a reality that sustains local economies and livelihoods. I was searching for a story that could hold both these truths together. Even after completing the documentary, that story didn’t immediately emerge. I moved on to make A Boy Who Dreamt of Electricity (2024), a film that had been living with me for a long time.

Yet the subject of mining in the Aravallis continued to haunt me. I knew I would return to it, even though I was still unsure how to translate it into fiction. I kept meeting people, listening to their stories and spending time on the ground. In that process, the documentary helped shape my perspective and deepen my understanding.

Gradually, through these encounters, I began to find my characters in real people whose lives embodied the complexity of the situation. That is when the film started to take shape. It is not a one-sided critique of mining. It emerges from the reality that there are conflicting yet equally valid perspectives on the ground. Many remain unaware of this layered truth, and I felt fiction could convey its emotional and human complexity more deeply than facts alone.

For me, the film grew out of listening, observing and allowing the subject to slowly reveal its human face.

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DS: Whispers of the Mountains suggests a childhood shrinking under the pressure of ecological and economic forces. Did you approach Raghu’s journey more as a loss of innocence than a coming-of-age story? If so, why?

JN: Raghu’s journey is deeply rooted in innocence. As a mute child, he does not see the mountains as separate from life itself. For him, they are living beings. They grow, disappear and carry stories within them. In his world, the mountains are not land or resources. They are living presences. Raghu feels that the mountains want to speak, that they hold pain and sorrow within them. In many ways, he recognizes his own emotions in them. The loneliness he carries in his heart mirrors the loneliness he senses in the landscape, and this shared feeling binds him to the mountains. Through Raghu, I wanted to explore the purity of a child’s way of seeing that is untouched by ideas of profit, development or economic gain. He is unaware of how mining sustains livelihoods. He only feels the loss, the silence and the pain of something being taken away. For me, he becomes the emotional bridge between the human and natural worlds. His innocence allows the audience to experience the mountains not as objects, but as living presences that are slowly being erased.

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DS: Raghu is mute yet he becomes the film’s moral and emotional center. What did his silence allow you to express that dialogue might have diluted?

JN: While writing the film, the most challenging part was shaping Raghu’s character. I always knew what he was feeling emotionally, but the real question was how to communicate that without dialogue. Working with a child, especially a non-professional actor, meant I couldn’t rely on conventional performance in the usual way.

In my first draft, Raghu could speak. I wanted to understand what he might say and how he would express himself if he had words. That draft helped me explore his inner world, but creatively it didn’t feel honest or effective. I wasn’t convinced. Whereas, in the second draft, I made Raghu mute, and with that came a new set of doubts. Would this work? Would the audience accept a silent character? Would they be able to connect with him emotionally? These questions stayed with me throughout the writing process. Casting added another layer of uncertainty. Rajveer [Rao], who plays Raghu, is not a professional actor. He had never faced a camera and had no background in theatre or drama. He was chosen from a rural school in Udaipur. During the shoot, the fear remained, especially in emotionally charged scenes between father and son, where everything depended on silence and body language.

Rajveer is a very reserved child, and there were moments when I wondered if the emotions would reach the audience. But once we completed the film and I saw the first cut with my editor, I felt a deep sense of relief. It became clear that choosing silence over dialogue was the right decision. I realized that making Raghu mute was not a limitation. It became the film’s emotional strength.

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DS: Tilak, the widowed father, is never portrayed as an antagonist. He disapproves of his son’s desire to study in the city but doesn’t want to abandon him after his second marriage. How did you approach portraying him without falling into moral binaries?

JN: My films are not built around clear antagonists and protagonists. Especially in Whispers of the Mountains, it is never a simple good-versus-bad story. At its core, it follows a human being struggling within himself, and [it’s] caught between what feels morally right and what feels necessary for survival.

These conflicts are part of everyday life. Often, what seems right for an individual may not be right for a family, or may come at a painful cost. Tilak lives inside this tension. He wants stability and progress, yet he is deeply concerned about his son — whether Raghu will accept a new woman in their lives, and how that change might affect him emotionally.

This made Tilak a complex character to write. His choices are not driven by cruelty or selfishness, but by fear, responsibility, love and the instinct to survive. Even during shooting and editing, new layers kept emerging and the character continued to reveal himself.

Although the film may appear to be a father-son story, at its heart it is a child’s story — a child who loves the mountains and cannot emotionally accept their destruction. Over time, the relationship between father and son became deeply entangled with larger social and environmental realities. The film’s emotional power comes from this inner conflict — not from external villains but from profoundly human struggles that many of us recognize in our own lives.

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DS: Whispers of the Mountains avoids offering solutions to the dilemma of sustaining livelihoods versus environmental destruction. While the movie never names corporations or governments, it closely reflects what is happening on the ground. Do you see your filmmaking as a means of intervention or primarily as an act of observation?

JN: I have never been interested in making films that feel like activism or agenda-driven cinema. I don’t approach a subject thinking of it as an activist film. I chose this story because the issue was close to my heart. Environmental destruction in my region was happening quietly, and very few people were talking about it.

My intention was never to offer solutions or tell people what to do. I was more interested in observing and reflecting everyday life as it unfolds. If there is any sense of hope in the film, it comes through Raghu’s innocence, and his belief that even planting a single tree can make a difference — that hope is emotional, not political.

I never wanted Whispers of the Mountains to feel like a protest or a statement. I wanted it to remain a human story, rooted in the rhythms of daily life. The film grew out of what I observed through conversations, time spent with people and small moments witnessed during my research. Many scenes are drawn directly from real experiences. For me, cinema is a way of quietly listening and reflecting [on] what already exists, rather than loudly instructing audiences on what to think or do.

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DS: Whispers of the Mountains relies heavily on long shots and static compositions. How closely did you work with Burhan Habshee to shape this visual dialectic? And what did it allow you to express about the characters and landscape?

JN: The film’s visual design was something I discussed in depth with my cinematographer, Burhan Habshee, right from the beginning. This approach also comes from my long-standing love for Iranian cinema.

The mining region stretches across a vast landscape, and we consciously used wider shots to help the audience feel the geography and scale of the area. At the same time, we were careful not to let these wide frames turn into [a] spectacle. I wanted viewers to feel as though they were entering this region to experience the dust, the machinery and the way people live within this environment.

Alongside the wide shots, we focused on stillness and closeness, ensuring that human presence remained central. That is why we chose a visual language built around long takes and static compositions. The camera often stays still, allowing life to unfold naturally within the frame. This creates a sense of quiet observation, where the audience is not emotionally pushed but invited to witness.

By balancing wide shots that convey scale with restrained and static framing that creates intimacy, we aimed to show both the vastness of mining and the fragile human lives that exist within it.

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DS: The constant industrial noise and drifting dust make the environmental devastation palpable — almost a character in itself. How did you approach sound as a storytelling tool, rather than as mere atmosphere?

JN: Sound was central to the film for me. I wanted the audience to feel the constant presence of the mining region — the kind of noise that slowly becomes part of everyday life.

While shooting there for nearly 15 days, the sound of heavy machinery, trucks and mining equipment was relentless. In the first few days, it felt almost unbearable. But gradually something shifted and we began to get used to it. The noise became normal. It blended into daily existence.

I wanted the audience to experience that same process. The machines are not meant to function as background sound, but as an inescapable presence that slowly surrounds you. The aim was to place the viewer inside the mining region, living within its soundscape.

Through sound, I wanted to create a physical and emotional experience, one where the audience doesn’t just observe mining, but feels what it means to exist within an environment shaped by constant noise and pressure.

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DS: The actors in Whispers of the Mountains deliver performances that bring a sense of naturalism to the story, portraying their situations without theatrics. Could you share your casting process and how you collaborated with them to achieve this?

JN: The casting process was quite challenging because the film brings together both professional and non-professional actors. Tilak, the father, is played by Harshant [Sharma], a trained actor. Raghu, on the other hand, was handpicked from a rural school, while Prakash, played by Kunal Mehta, is a theatre actor from Udaipur.

Most of the secondary characters were portrayed by non-professional actors — people who were close to the real world of the film. I wanted to keep the film grounded and truthful, so realism was essential.

Since many of them were not trained actors, I avoided giving fixed dialogues. Instead, I worked with situations. I would place them within a scene and explain what was happening emotionally and practically. We focused on where the scene begins and where it needs to end — the entry and exit points — rather than on memorizing lines.

Before the shoot, we conducted basic workshops where we discussed the story, the characters, their limitations, clothing and body language. But we deliberately avoided written dialogue. For non-professional actors, memorizing lines often leads to mechanical performances, and I wanted to preserve a sense of natural behavior on screen.

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DS: Much like Whispers of the Mountains, your debut feature was also made on a modest budget and in a local language. How do you continue making one film after another despite the limited infrastructure and support for independent filmmaking?

JN: Making independent films is always difficult, and it becomes even more challenging when working in a language like Rajasthani. There is very little film infrastructure or industry support in Rajasthan for films made in the language. Very few projects are produced, which makes each film an uncertain undertaking.

I choose to make my films in my own language because it feels natural and honest to me. It is a world I understand deeply. Over time, I have built a small ecosystem in my native place with a group of people who support and believe in these stories. That support becomes crucial when you are working without a strong industry structure.

While writing, I remain conscious of practical realities. I try to ensure that even if I don’t find a producer or financier, the film can still be made. Budget is part of the writing process, and not to restrict creativity but to make sure the film can exist under any circumstances.

Technically, making a film today is easier because equipment and post-production tools are more accessible. But bringing the film into the world — through festivals, distribution and reaching audiences — remains extremely challenging for small independent films, especially in a language with limited visibility.

Often, the journey after the film is completed is harder than making the film itself. Still, I believe it is essential to tell these stories in the language and landscape they truly belong to.

Dipankar Sarkar (@Dipankar_Tezpur) is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic based in India. As a freelancer, he regularly contributes to various Indian publications on cinema-related topics.

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