Indian filmmaker Kanu Behl doesn’t watch his own films after they’ve been cut. Not even at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes film festival, where his latest film, Agra, premiered in May this year. Instead, Behl makes it a habit to wait outside the doors while the film is rolling, staring at his watch – waiting for the first round of squeamish viewers to exit. They do. For Agra, this occurs at the half-hour mark – our antihero, Guru (played by Mohit Agarwal), spends two-and-a-half minutes jerking off on the toilet. The scene is grim: grey tiles featuring dolphins and bubbles, a grubby cistern, cobalt-blue bottle of toilet cleaner, and a phone in one hand, where Guru types his sexual roleplay fantasies to an anonymous chatroom user with the screen name…
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Dazed & Confused (Digital) - 1 Issue, Autumn 2023