Kanu Behl interview: ‘Agra is a film about desire and sexual repression’

Let’s begin with Agra. Do you see it in conversation with Titli, your debut, which also screened at Cannes and has been widely acclaimed?

Honestly, I wouldn’t know — that’s for other people to decide. I don’t think very much about the “body of work” even though I have only made three films. Personally, I don’t see Titli and Agra as similar. Titli was about family, circularity, violence, and how emotional images get transferred from one person or generation to another. Agra deals with very different questions: sexuality, sexual repression, physical spaces, and how our sexual lives affect the spaces we live in — and how those spaces affect us in return. At its core, Agra is a film about desire. So to me, they’re very separate pieces.

If Titli was about escape, would you say Agra is about entrapment?

In a way, yes. Maybe that’s what leads people to compare them; the textural quality of the worlds. But the ideas are different.

You repeatedly return to the home as a key site, whether of conflict, desire, or aspiration. Why?

Home is an intimate battlefield. It reveals things about characters that are hard to reach in other settings. Not that films shot entirely outside can’t do this, but the home gives fertile territory: you see people interact with those closest to them, and that lets you peel back their layers. Across my three films, this has happened organically. I think the home simply allows you to watch characters negotiate their most private selves.

The title Agra carries the duality of the Taj Mahal and the mental asylum that the city is also known for. Did you consciously explore that tension between love and madness?

Yes, but I don’t want to reveal a key part of the film. What I can say is that Guru, the protagonist, carries enormous stress and repression, and expresses it in unusual, obsessive ways. He could easily be dismissed as “pagal,” but as I wrote the characters, I realised the others in the house were far more devious and erratic. Guru became the only one trying to confront the madness around him, even though he lacks the vocabulary to articulate it. That’s when the house began to feel like a madhouse. And growing up in Delhi, the phrase “Agra ka pagal khana” is familiar to everyone — it became a natural metaphor for the emotional landscape of the film.

The film also touches on class anxieties, extramarital relationships, and the struggle to own a home. Did these threads arise organically?

Mostly, yes. I spent a long time writing the film, and while shooting you always adapt, but we had a strong script. For me, beneath class, gender, politics, or moral questions, I was trying to tell a story about desire — and the fragility and transactional nature of human relationships. Growing up in East Delhi, I saw how precarious these lives could be.

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Women, in particular, had to be subversive because they weren’t imbued with direct power. Their resilience fascinated me. Agra is a masculine piece in many ways, but I also wanted to explore the women through Guru’s gaze, not to judge him, but to understand him from inside his repression.

Some critics might interpret certain scenes as misogynistic. Has that worry crossed your mind?

Not really. I know every character has been written with empathy and dimensionality. What concerns me more is a trend in Indian cinema where people conflate the character with the filmmaker — or assume the film is endorsing the character. With Agra, Guru is confronting a difficult truth. The film isn’t celebrating him. Similarly, when I watched Animal, I didn’t see the film endorsing its protagonist. By the end, the man doesn’t even have a heart — he’s decaying. The depiction is titillating, yes, but endorsement is different. That nuance is increasingly lost. As a filmmaker, I can only make the film with honesty; I can’t control misreadings.

So for you, the more honest approach is to look at the perpetrator from the inside?

Absolutely. One way is to sit outside and say, “This guy is bad, look at him.” That’s a PSA film. But if everything is that clear, why do men like this still exist? The more difficult but more effective way is to understand what the perpetrator is feeling. If you can articulate that internal world, maybe you can come closer to a real solution.

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Before writing Agra, I asked myself if I even understood someone like Guru — I wasn’t as repressed as some boys I grew up with. So I had to find my way into his emotional truth. And once you get there, you have no choice but to tell the story from the inside.

You speak of realism. Do you see your films as realist works?

In some ways yes, in others no. As Werner Herzog says, the best documentary tends towards fiction, and the best fiction tends towards documentary. Once you choose a camera angle, realism is altered. What we create is a ruse of reality — something believable enough to pull you in.

You assisted Dibakar Banerjee on Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and co-wrote Love Sex aur Dhokha. How did those years shape you?

They were foundational. I was fresh out of film school, and being around Dibakar was transformative. He worked with incredible calm, completely different from the chaotic energy I’d seen growing up around my parents’ sets. He lived for cinema; the ethics we studied were alive in him. Those years taught me rigour, discipline, and joy.

You also worked in documentary. How did that influence your fiction?

Immensely. My first documentary at film school was nothing like what I planned, because documentaries resist control. Yet it became my best project. That was my first big lesson: let go of ego. Until then I was playing at being a filmmaker. Documentary forced me to listen —to people, to spaces, to accidents. That sensibility sits inside all my fiction work.

Do you consciously focus on a particular demographic: urban Indians negotiating anxiety, aspiration, and survival?

No. My aim is simply to make human stories with nuance, not one-dimensional pieces.

You’ve said you’ve moved on from Agra. What are you working on now?

Two things in early development. One is a spiritual-horror doppelgänger story. The other is a French-language noir-romance set in Bordeaux. So yes, from India to elsewhere now.

Independent cinema is vibrant right now, but theatrical release remains a struggle. How do you see this contradiction?

The good independent films we’re seeing are happening in spite of the system, not because of it. We urgently need a sustainable ecosystem. Otherwise this wave may die out. And the problem isn’t confined to cinema; it affects all arts. There’s an unhealthy obsession with numbers. Without cultural “empty spaces” for reflection, societies lose nuance. We’re seeing this globally.

Trump’s proposed tariffs on non-US films: could that affect collaborations between Indian studios and American producers?

With Trump, anything is possible. He might say the opposite tomorrow morning.

Does it bother you that your films don’t reach mass audiences?

It bothers me that there is no system guaranteeing even a minimum platform for certain kinds of films. I’m not chasing blockbusters. But as a tax-paying citizen, I want a better cultural landscape. Countries like France have policies; if a film reaches certain festivals, it gets a minimum number of screens. We have nothing comparable.

Finally, three films you think everyone should watch?

2001: A Space Odyssey, The Wind Will Carry Us, and The Master.

And three filmmakers who have shaped your vision?

Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick, and Emir Kusturica.