How indie film ‘The Ink-Stained Hand & The Missing Thumb’ explores ‘emotional time’

Indian independent cinema’s impressive global streak continues with Yashasvi Juyal’s The Ink-Stained Hand & The Missing Thumb, a formally rigorous and intricate love-loss-longing mesh.

Juyal’s debut feature will be premiered at the ongoing Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the competition section. Juyal’s previous short films include The Last Rhododendron and Rains Don’t Make Us Happy Anymore.

The Ink-Stained Hand & The Missing Thumb takes place in a town called Nagina. It’s 2003, a time in which time itself moves slowly and to a different beat.

The lovers Santosh (Dheeraj Kumar) and Rajji (Bhumika Dube) work at a highway toll booth, avidly consume a television science programme anchored by Professor Pluto (Sudarshan Juyal) and contemplate their future. Rajji has barely recovered from Santosh’s sudden death when he turns up at her doorstep.

Is the revenant a ghost with unfinished business, a grief-stricken Rajji’s waking dream, or a symbol of the creeping urbanisation that is altering their surroundings?

The experiences of Santosh, Rajji and others in the town unfold within boxy, intimate compositions created by the 4:3 shooting ratio. The cinematography, editing, colour palette and production design all evoke a world that is real in its texture but magical in its possibilities.

A self-taught filmmaker, the 29-year-old Yashasvi Juyal grew up in Dehradun. He spent a few years in Mumbai as an assistant director in films and commercials. (His elder brother is the actor Raghav Juyal).

Yashasvi Juyal eventually returned to Dehradun to set up his own production company, Silvercord Films, and explore the region’s social and cultural history. The Ink-Stained Hand & The Missing Thumb has a host of influences.

Juyal’s grandfather, Anand Swaroop Sharma, was heavily involved with the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal, one of the leading organisations in the carving out of Uttarakhand from Uttar Pradesh in 2000. Juyal grew up with strong memories of Dehradun before it came to resemble other unplanned Indian cities.

Juyal also recalls a diverse population comprising locals as well as migrants and trips to a verdant forest on the edge of the city. The inexorable changes brought about by construction projects such as a national highway worm their way into Juyal’s layered screenplay.

The Ink-Stained Hand & The Missing Thumb counts Dipesh Manral as its cinematographer, Viraj Selot as its editor, Mahak Gupta as its colourist, Shikha Bisht as its production designer and Ankit Thapa as its sound designer. Produced by Silvercord Films, Ammi Films and Khan & Kumar, the film also has Shaunak Sen as executive producer.

Juyal spoke to Scroll about his inspirations and stylistic choices. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Did The Ink-Stained Hand & The Missing Thumb come to you as a story or an image?

All my work revolves around the feeling of migration, of different kind of migrations. My previous film, Rains Don’t Make Us Happy Anymore, was about the memories of a village that got drowned because of a dam. This film too is about a memory of a hometown and how that shifts when a highway comes.

The main idea is from this image of how Dehradun used to be in early 2003. That’s one of the most beautiful memories of my life. Dehradun used to be a closed, countryside kind of a space, with a highway carved in between. There is now a huge change in Dehradun because of the urban sprawl.

Also, there was a widely-reported incident of a truck crashing into a toll booth. When I went to the site the next day, I saw that the booth was taped up, like a human being, and a worker was inside the booth. When I asked him what he was doing there, he joked, I am a bhoot [ghost].

What is the film saying about the natural landscape of Uttarakhand, which is facing permanent alternation and ecological threats?

When I began writing the film, there was the incident of workers being stuck for days in a tunnel in Uttarkashi. The urban sprawl, the Char Dham Highway, the changes in land use patterns, all of this are causing shifts in the landscape.

A very common conversation in the drawing rooms of Dehradun is that we have lost Dehradun. The film is about what a Himalayan town was like, and perhaps should be like.

I am no expert, but I know what is happening at my relative’s place in Joshimath, or in my own village in Pauri, which is slowly sinking. I felt that I needed to explore these shifts. I felt a huge sense of responsibility.

The film also emerges from the way Uttarakhand has been represented. Many people confuse Uttarakhand with Himachal Pradesh. But Uttarakhand is absolutely different in its cultural and social history.

It’s a relatively new state, but it has a very long history, with a culmination and cross-dissolve of different rituals and cultures. It was important to understand the space, to archive and anthropologically restore it, in a sense.

One of cinema’s favourite tools to evoke nostalgia or a subjectively remembered past is the 4:3 aspect ratio for shooting. What role is the 4:3 playing in your movie?

I initially wanted to make the film within a larger aspect ratio, but I couldn’t because there were all these urban structures in the compositions. So, my cinematographer Dipesh Manral and I choose 4:3 to keep the period alive in the film. It comes from the changing urban dynamics of the space.

The 4:3 is working like a zoetrope – it’s like seeing an installation piece in a museum. Many people don’t know if the Nagina town is real, whether the world is real or unreal.

When does the line actually blur? Is Santosh dead or not? The 4:3 is a tool to create a certain experience.

The film’s compositions are nearly all frontal. There is barely any camera movement.

The camera technically moves thrice. Each move represents travel. This was done to explore the experience of liminality in the toll booths. They are somewhere in between.

In our region, you leave the rural space to go to the metropolitan and then return home. The toll booths are stuck in liminality, they are neither moving nor leaving. The camera movement adds to the experience of the afterlife and the return. There’s also an extra-terrestrial touch to Santosh.

Santosh’s return is foreshadowed by the TV broadcasts hosted by Professor Pluto. Who is Pluto, played by Sudarshan Juyal?

I was very bad in science. But I used to watch an old Doordarshan educational show called Brahmand – The Universe, hosted by Girish Karnad. My grandfather had DVDs of Brahmand, and he used to screen them for me.

I am a huge admirer of the show. We shot the scenes of Professor Pluto in an old Doordarshan studio on a DV camera and then projected the footage onto a television.

Sudarshan Juyal has worked in television and used to be the programming head at the Sahara network, so he brought a special, organic touch to Professor Pluto. He isn’t related to me, but he is a mentor. I watched a lot of world cinema thanks to him. Professor Pluto is also a kind of sutradhar [narrator] who is explaining what’s happening but also not explaining, which is nice.

The film is so personal. I have given homage to everything that has fascinated me in pop culture.

One of my relatives is a librarian at a government-run girls’ college, which is also one of the oldest colleges in Uttarakhand. As a child, I have spent many hours in the library. I observed the college carefully, the students who come there, some of whom work alongside pursuing a degree. I also have a lot of photographs from that time. Old family albums were very important for me in terms of research.

For international viewers who may not get the local references, The Ink-Stained Hand & The Missing Thumb could be taken as a love story that has been interrupted and seeks closure. This is explored through lengthy takes and elliptical cuts. What is the film saying about time?

I’m talking about the idea of time emotionally, rather than scientifically. The idea of time is so important in dramas, relationships, everywhere. Everything is about the passage of time.

When you are in a relationship, you tend to have expectations and mould your partner. That’s not the ideal case – everybody have their own time.

We live in in a world governed by the politics of a hyper-stimulation algorithm. Through long takes, I am actually telling myself to slow down.

I am somebody who’s living a very peaceful life before getting sucked into brain-rot and doom scrolling. Then I remember that I have made this film, and I need to go back to it.

How did you find your main and secondary actors?

I had Dheeraj Kumar in mind while creating Santosh. Dheeraj is a very good friend. He reads a lot a lot of Hindi literature. He was the one who first introduced me to Vinod Kumar Shukla and Mangesh Dabral. He worked a lot on the notes for his character and his performance.

For Rajji, I wanted somebody who was technically strong. We had limited shooting days and a tight budget. We had a blend of professional and non-professional actors, so everything had to work out.

Casting was especially important because the writing is very peculiar in terms of its humour in certain moments. I did a lot of street casting for the other actors. I didn’t do too many workshops. The idea was to make them relax and enjoy what they were doing.

How did you find the producers for your film?

I made the film in 2024 and did a patchwork shoot in 2025. It’s been a long journey of pitching the film and then getting the funds and grants while also keeping the voice intact.

You do get feedback to make the film more accessible, but you need to do your homework on the kind of work that international funders support and champion. You need to spend a lot of time alone working on your film. Don’t get into forums until and unless you know exactly what you are making.

My film came alive because of my producers Sharib Khan and Vikas Kumar. Also, Shaunak Sen, and Neha Kaul, and Viraj Sikand and Bhavna Kankaria, who are my producers from Silvercord and have been there right from the beginning.