‘Aatmapamphlet’: Ashish Avinash Bende on the Joy and Justice of Winning The National Film Award for Best Debut Film

Filmmaker Ashish Avinash Bende doesn’t so much speak as unspool. In conversation with The Hollywood Reporter India, his thoughts unravel like a long, handwritten letter; one part reflection, one part rebuttal, several parts memory. When asked why he made Aatmapamphlet, the Marathi-language debut that won him the National Film Award for Best Debut Film of a Director, he circles back several years. “I’ve been working in the industry a long time,” he says. “I was closely associated with various films. And for five or six years, I was trying to make my own.” 

There were many versions of that film, many producers approached and walked away. The story, based loosely on Bende’s own life, didn’t land until it did. The spark, as he tells it, came from longtime collaborator Madhugandha Kulkarni. “She forced me to write it. I didn’t want to, but she saw something in the story.” What began as a straightforward commercial film—with songs, a love story, a familiar arc—gradually gave way to something stranger, more specific, more sincere. “The first version was very easy to get producers for,” he says. “But Paresh Mokashi was also writing another draft on the side, a more abstract, more personal, more comedic version. Eventually I chose Paresh's draft.” 

It didn’t exactly open doors. Many friends and producers read the script, but no one bit. “Only one person, Aanand L Rai from Colour Yellow Productions read it, loved it. Within five minutes, they were in,” Bende recalls. “There was no second reading, no revisions. That’s how Aatmapamphlet began.” 

The film, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival before finding a global audience on Amazon Prime Video, is a deeply original coming-of-age story told through the diary entries of a young Dalit boy who falls in love and begins to ask questions about the world around him. Its visual style is playful and pop-art-inflected; its tone veers from wry comedy to gentle provocation. It is, by Bende’s own admission, “atrangi”—a little absurd, deeply heartfelt, and full of tonal contradictions that somehow hold together. 

Those contradictions were by design. “We’ve had great films on caste like Fandry and Sairat which I love. But they’re very realistic, very grounded,” he says. “We wanted to do something different. These stories have been told. How do you tell them again, without repeating?” The answer, it turned out, was to shift the frame entirely. 

By adopting the child’s point of view, Aatmapamphlet renders the machinery of caste both ridiculous and terrifying. “When a child asks, ‘Why is this happening to me and not others?’ it becomes a powerful question,” he says. “It makes the system visible.” 

Still, the film’s absurdist charm didn’t exempt it from scrutiny. During its certification process with the Indian censor board, Aatmapamphlet was asked to mute words like 'mahar' and 'chamar,' and received 14 suggested cuts after its first screening. “They wanted to remove any mention of caste,” Bende says. “But if you're showing this to children and a child in the film asks, ‘What’s your caste?’—how can you not address that?” 

Eventually, after some back and forth, the film was cleared. Only one change was insisted upon: flags of Russia, China, and Pakistan in the final sequence had to be removed. “I understood that they didn’t want our diplomatic relationships affected. But the film had already premiered in Australia. Our image wasn’t harmed,” he shrugs. 

What’s striking about Bende is his lack of bitterness. He sees these skirmishes as part of the process, not its price. “There’s a tradition in Dalit literature of rebellious writing, a very aggressive style of social critique. That’s important. But we wanted to do something different. Instead of pointing fingers at the oppressor, we wanted to put our arm around him.” 

That, perhaps, is what makes Aatmapamphlet such a rare debut: its refusal to flatten rage into rhetoric. Its politics are undeniable, but so is its humanity. 

When the National Award was announced, Bende wasn’t expecting it. “I didn’t have it on my mind,” he says. “I come from the Paresh Mokashi school. He doesn’t even attend awards.” Bende recalls while assisting on one of Mokashi’s films, when he walked into the director’s bathroom. “All his awards were just lying there in the loft. Not on display. That really stayed with me.” 

Still, Bende recognises the doors it can open. “Some opportunities do come up. People start looking at you differently. But you still need to perform. You still need a good script.” Awards, he says, are “momentary recognition. Not forever.” 

After Aatmapamphlet, he directed the long-form series Manvat Murders, which received mixed-to-positive reviews. “It did really well in the Hindi belt,” he says. “SonyLIV is considering making another show with me. And I’m working on one long-format project and two film scripts—one is a love story of a breakup.” He says with a laugh. “That one’s in Hindi. The other is more in the thriller genre.” 

Recently, he also won the Maharashtra State Award for Best Debut Director. So this National Award doesn’t feel like a fluke. Nor does it feel like a peak. It feels like a voice, long simmering, finally catching the wind.