In Tribeny Rai’s ‘Shape of Momo’, a difficult daughter and the complexity of rebellion

“It is the things that tangle and exhaust us that make us what we are,” observes the lead character of Tribeny Rai’s Shape of Momo. In the Nepali-language drama, a young woman’s complicated relationship with her family, the place in which she grew up, and her cultural heritage is enervating as well as illuminating.

Rai’s tenderly observed and quietly fierce feature debut is being screened at the International Film Festival of Kerala (December 12-19). Shape of Momo revolves around 32-year-old Bishnu’s reluctant return to her village in Sikkim. Bishnu (Gaumaya Gurung) re-enters familiar territory – intrusive questions about her single status, low-level tensions with her mother and sister Junu, unsolicited career advice.

Bishnu’s inability to make a perfectly-shaped momo is a sore point, a reminder of the prevailing social expectations from women as well as the preference for men in her part of the world.

An air of regret hangs over the siblings, especially Junu (Shyama Shree Sherpa), once a promising basketball player and now a pregnant housewife. While Bishnu’s mother (Pashupati Rai) has made her peace with her surroundings, Bishnu sees her mother’s equanimity as defeat.

The all-female family includes Bishnu’s irreverent grandmother (Bhanu Maya Rai), who is past the age of caring. But the sensitive Bishnu does care, and deeply.

She loses her temper with the migrant workers at the family-owned orange orchard, showing an unpleasant and intolerant side. Bishnu’s declaration “I won’t endure, I won’t tolerate” is double-edged in Tribeny Rai’s screenplay, co-written with Aise Hee director Kislay.

In an email interview, the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute alumnus spoke to Scroll about what Shape of Momo says about womanhood, family and the idea of home.

Shape of Momo seems intensely personal. Are you Bishnu, or Junu, or both?

The film is personal in its emotional truth, though it is not my story. These women and places are part of the environment I grew up in. Some moments may resemble things I’ve witnessed and some emotions surely echo what I’ve felt, but the film is not a reconstruction of specific events.

At different moments, I am both Bishnu and Junu. Perhaps I am closest to Bishnu, because like her, I went back to my village from the city. But the film is also the story of many other individuals and of what keeps happening to them, quietly, across generations.

What did your co-writer Kislay bring to the screenplay – distance, perhaps?

I had seen Kislay’s debut film Aise Hee, and I felt he had the sensibility to engage with a story like mine. We had already been friends for a few years, so there was complete trust between us. That trust made it possible for me to share very personal experiences and observations with him.

At the same time, I wanted someone who would be honest with me as a collaborator. That process helped the film move beyond the personal and into something more universal. Where I brought intimacy and lived experience, he brought objectivity and an outside gaze that kept the story from becoming inward-looking.

He also encouraged me to take a risk with the protagonist – to allow her to be difficult and flawed. That, in turn, makes it challenging for the audience to always sympathise with her. It is never easy to tell a story when you know that people may not like your hero, but his confidence in that choice helped me stay with it.

The film is dedicated to your father, “who believed I was a bird”. Tell us about your family background.

Mine is a family of teachers, and cinema was never seen as a natural option. But when I said I wanted to pursue films, both my parents supported my decision.

After I joined film school, my father stopped calling me by my name and would instead always address me as “director.” He was an enabler. Even though he faced discrimination for not having a son to carry forward the family’s legacy, he never let that bitterness touch me.

He passed away in 2013. In many ways, my debut film is my tribute to him, a way of honouring the courage and love that shaped me.

An irregularly shaped momo could symbolise Bishnu’s rebellion against the demands made on women. Could it also represent the flexibility of tradition and family?

I’m not sure how flexible the family would have been had there been a male presence. These structures shift with time, yet they also resist change; they bend and harden in the same breath.

In the film, rather than isolating a single theme, we tried to sit with the layers of life as they intersect and contradict each other. Bishnu is rebellious, but she also carries a quiet sense of superiority toward the locals. The family suffers under social judgment, yet they judge the Bihari migrant with the same inherited gaze. Bishnu feels guilty for evicting the tenants, but is that guilt born of empathy, or simply a way of easing her own conscience?

We don’t provide an answer. We wanted these questions to remain suspended, allowing the viewer to dwell in the ambiguity where life usually resides.

As for me, the expectations are still there. I am expected to embody the woman society wants me to be, while also compensating for the son my parents never had. So I’ve learned to inhabit both the feminine and the masculine at times with ease, at times with conflict. Perhaps that tension too finds its way into our film.

Bishnu is a bit impatient and insensitive to the needs of others. What went into her character?

Often, when portraying characters on the screen, we become too aware that an audience will be watching and judging their actions. With underrepresented characters in particular, there is a tendency to justify every choice, to calibrate their behaviour so carefully that we end up over-explaining why they do what they do. With Bishnu, we resisted that impulse.

She consciously shapes herself apart from her mother and sister; she refuses the easy smiles and polite nods that often smooth a woman’s path through the world. Her rebellion, her innate anger, occasionally crosses a line and that felt honest. Isn’t that true for all of us?

A personality trait that begins as a rightful response to social pressures can grow into something heavy, even oppressive. We wanted Bishnu to inhabit that “too much” space and still be understood. Her choices are not always easy to defend, and that discomfort is intentional. It invites the audience to engage with her not as an idealised symbol but as a complex, fully human individual.

What kind of actors were you looking for?

People from the North East look different from the way Indians are often represented on screen. Growing up, I rarely found resonance with the faces I saw in mainstream cinema, or with the stories being told through them. So it was important for me to cast people who actually look like my people.

At the same time, I was looking for actors who believed in the story as deeply as I did. That belief allowed them to bring their own experiences and understanding into the process. In that sense, the casting became a deeply collaborative part of the filmmaking.

What was the process of funding and shooting the film like?

The film was shot in my own village and in the surrounding villages where I grew up. In terms of funding, independent films are always difficult to finance and films made in regional languages even more so – especially when the language does not have an established film industry. It becomes harder to find support when there is uncertainty about how and where the film will travel.

The shoot itself was challenging, but at the same time deeply enjoyable. We were a group of like-minded people who came together to tell a story we all believed in. That collective commitment carried us through the difficulties.

Do you hope to release Shape of Momi in theatres in Sikkim?

Yes, we would very much like to bring the film back home and release it in Sikkim, North Bengal and in the pockets of the country where Nepali-speaking audiences live. That remains very important to us.

At the same time, the reality is that it is extremely difficult for independent films to find space in theatres today. So we are holding on to that hope and working towards it, step by step.