India is home to thousands of beautiful stories, says Kartiki Gonsalves of The Elephant Whisperers

From visiting museums and nature parks with her parents as a young girl to bagging the coveted Oscar, Kartiki Gonsalves has come a long way.

While some may argue that India doesn’t need Western validation, Gonsalves—the director of The Elephant Whisperers, which won the Academy Award for the Best Documentary Short Film—has a different point of view.

“The Academy has the largest culmination of global talent in art and films awarded over many years. Is there something larger than that?” she asks.

“It is not about Western validation. It is about celebrating cinema,” Gonsalves tells YS Life on the sidelines of a CII summit on the South Indian media and entertainment industry, held in Chennai recently.

And that is exactly what the world is doing—celebrating the heartfelt creation of this filmmaker who grew up in Ooty, a hill station in Tamil Nadu.

The artwork on Gonsalves’ Instagram page—sent in by people from all walks of life—is a testimony to their love and adulation for Raghu, Ammu, Bomman, and Bellie—the stars of The Elephant Whisperers.

Gonsalves is also a star in her own right, in a predominantly male-dominated field.

Ironically, for someone who loves wielding the camera, Gonsalves is “anti-camera”—by her own admission—when the spotlight is on her. But this is her moment of glory, and she deserves to bask in the limelight.

The Elephant Whisperers, which has transcended borders and boundaries of all kinds—geography, language, culture, and age—is the result of a six-year journey (and 450 hours of footage!) in the company of the elephant calves Raghu and Ammu and the couple Bomman and Bellie, who belong to the Kattunayakan tribe in the Nilgiris.

Gonsalves is happy that, through her film, she could share with the whole world the story of two people from a tiny indigenous community—there are only 1,700 people of the Kattunayakans left.

Focus on the emotional connect

In The Elephant Whisperers, Gonsalves adopts an unobtrusive approach to storytelling, where the filmmaker is almost invisible, and all one can see are Bomman and Bellie and their endearing bond with an orphaned calf Raghu, whom they look after.

“To get non-actors like Bomman and Bellie to be in something like this, you just have to be invisible. You need to be there, but not be there. You can’t walk in and have a film set. You need to get them to forget that there’s a camera around them. That’s the key to documentary storytelling,” explains Gonsalves.

Although the film has serious subtexts of conservation, habitat loss, and the need for coexistence, the director deliberately stays away from a complex science narrative and instead focuses on the emotional connection.

The filmmaker reveals that she consciously did not bring in an external narrator who would take over the voice of Bomman and Bellie.

“There is no better way than to get your own people to tell their story. That’s when the passion comes, the connection comes,” she reflects and hopes her film will open up a different facet of storytelling.

World wants to see real stories

Gonsalves thinks documentary filmmaking has evolved over the years, although India still has a long way to go.

“Over the years, the main focus has been on mainstream cinema and not necessarily on documentary storytelling. But, in recent years, we have seen that documentary storytelling has had a place at the Oscars,” the filmmaker says.

“People are silently getting nominated, and they have a very high chance of winning because these are real stories, and this is what the world wants to see. We (India) need to start encouraging more documentary filmmakers and help documentary people fund their documentaries.”

Gonsalves refers to Indian documentary films Writing with Fire (by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas) and All That Breathes (by Shaunak Sen) and adds that this is just the beginning and many more stories are waiting to be told.

With the emergence of OTT platforms, she hopes more stories from young independent filmmakers will be unearthed. (The Elephant Whisperers is backed by Netflix.)

Gonsalves believes that, as filmmakers, it is important to have a strong story to tell, and it can be from anywhere—from India, which is “home to thousands of beautiful stories” or from around the world.

“You don’t have to have money; you don’t have to come from a film background. You just have to have a story to tell and be very clear about it,” says the filmmaker, who started working right after completing her post-graduate diploma in professional photography.

She relates to her career graph to reiterate the fact that all one needs is the passion for storytelling.

Interestingly, Gonsalves has trod quite a diverse path—and not all parts of it are related to her current vocation as a filmmaker.

Before The Elephant Whisperers, she worked at the Rural Technology Business Incubator in IIT Madras, spending time in rural communities, and as a sales girl in FabIndia. She was also in advertising for six years and worked in a gym briefly. Besides these, she has done tour guiding to support herself.

Then came her true calling in 2017, when the filmmaker came across Raghu as she was driving from Bengaluru to Ooty.

The story behind the story

The Elephant Whisperers may be just a 40-minute documentary, but behind the short story lies a long tale spanning six years—a tale of perseverance and patience, taking the time to build trust and a connection with the subjects.

Initially, Gonsalves just spent time with Bomman and Bellie and the elephants and got to know them. It was only thereafter that she picked up the camera to film.

During the process of shooting, Gonsalves and her team had to brave the vagaries of the wild and contend with the moods of the two baby elephants.

“There were days when Ammu and Raghu were sick. We couldn’t film them. Sometimes, it was too hot to shoot. We still had to pay for everything. Some days, we would go out and not get anything; some days, we would come back with too much footage. Every day is a challenge. And there are wild leopards out there, and your life is on the line,” elaborates the filmmaker.

Thankfully, the many years she spent in the wilderness as a photographer helped her gain a good amount of understanding of how things work in the forest, and this came in handy while filming the documentary.

Her early initiation into nature, too, served her well, as it helped her develop a passion for wildlife and photography.

“My parents used to take me out into the wilderness a long time ago. While many families might have gone to the malls, we used to go to museums, nature parks, and aquariums. So, I started going out into nature when I was very young,” says Gonsalves, who has been a photographer since the age of 15.

What’s next?

Gonsalves believes her purpose is to bring out the message of conservation through her work.

Next on her plate is a project to document the sacred bond between the orcas (killer whales) and the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest.

After garnering much recognition for her first documentary, it’s time for the passionate young filmmaker to embark upon yet another adventure.