What if your biggest worry in old age is not who will look after you, but who will look after the person you love when you’re gone?
This is the moving story behind Pyre, filmmaker Vinod Kapri’s award-winning film set in an almost-deserted Himalayan village.
In 2018, Vinod met an elderly couple in Munsiyari, Uttarakhand, whose livelihood depended on their goats.
The husband said their income helped him arrange for people to carry his ailing wife downhill for medical care. As long as he had his goats, he said, his wife would survive.
But his biggest fear was who would care for her if he died first. His wife’s worry was just as moving: who would cook for him, since he didn’t know how?
These simple yet profound answers stayed with Vinod for years, inspiring him to tell a story about love, ageing, loneliness and an elderly couple’s arduous wait for their estranged son.
Starring first-time actors Padam Singh Kapri, a retired Army serviceman, and Heera Devi, Pyre was made with limited resources.
With no big studio backing, Vinod exhausted his savings and even sold his car and a plot of land to finance the film.
After winning 18 international awards, including multiple Best Film honours, Pyre finally made its way to Indian theatres on 30 October. Have you caught it on the big screen yet?
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