Cactus Pears
Singapore Premiere
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade India, UK, Canada 2025 112 min R21 (Homosexual Theme)
In this gentle queer drama, a grieving city dweller reconnects with a childhood friend and navigates traditions in his rural hometown.
Thirty-year-old Anand reluctantly returns from Mumbai to his ancestral village to fulfil an obligatory 10-day mourning period upon his father’s death. The many details of these rituals and his well-meaning relatives’ insistence on marriage leave him little room to grieve. A rekindled friendship with childhood friend Balya, now a farmhand, offers Anand respite. As the pair delicately peel back the layers of their shared history like the titular cactus pears, their coy gestures of intimacy give way to bolder expressions of desire.
Against the backdrop of Western India’s vast, rugged landscapes, this tenderly observed semi-autobiographical debut feature is a sensitive study of bereavement and the realities of queer lives in rural India.
Synopsis Writer: Aditi Shivaramakrishnan
Q&A with Filmmaker(s)
3 Dec, Wed 9:00PM / 112 min
Golden Village Suntec, Hall 1
Q&A with Filmmaker(s)
4 Dec, Thu 4:30PM / 112 min
Golden Village Suntec, Hall 5
AT THE FEST!
All screenings are on a free seating, first-come, first-served basis. We kindly ask all ticket holders to arrive on time. Latecomers may not be guaranteed entry.
RUSH QUEUE:
For last-minute attendees, good news. Our Rush Queue is back this year!
Cactus Pears
Sabar Bonda
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade
India, UK, Canada
2025
Marathi
English
112 min
R21 (Homosexual Theme)
Singapore Premiere
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade is a Mumbai-born Marathi filmmaker with a background in interior designer. An alumnus of the 11th Venice Biennale College Cinema, his shorts have screened internationally. Cactus Pears won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, the first Indian fiction film to do so.
Bhushaan Manoj,
Suraaj Suman,
Jayshri Jagtap
Neeraj Churi,
Mohamed Khaki,
Kaushik Ray,
Naren Chandavarkar,
Sidharth Meer,
Hareesh Reddypalli,
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade,
Jim Sarbh
