The Mind Behind Amal
“First and foremost is doing honest stories that come from one’s experiences,” says filmmaker Richie Mehta about what he took away from his experience making Amal. And while the movie’s story about a simple auto rickshaw driver in New Delhi is as far from his own experience growing up in North York, it’s honest emotion and simple parable has touched just about all who’ve seen it.
Amal is based on a short story by his brother Shaun, which he previously worked into a short film on a simple budget of $1,000. With the 
feature-length version Mehta had the opportunity to bring the movie to life as he always visualized. “I’ve always been attracted to cinematic representations of natural India, which I don’t think there have been enough of,” explains Mehta. “I read this short story and it had a kind of punch that was aimed at an eclectic audience. And the way to visualize it was to do it in a realistic style.”
That desire for realism saw him set up shop smack dab in the middle of New Delhi, a logistical nightmare for even the most season crew with unlimited resources. “It was next to impossible to create an environment where the actors can do what they’re supposed to do and give them that bubble, because there was no bubble.”
Everything in the film – from the traffic to the background players – were all real and actor Rupinder Nagra, who plays the title character, had to pilot his auto rickshaw in that environment. “If you move the frame even an inch right or left you’ll see thousands of people watching,” says Mehta. “Sometimes we’d have to try just to contain it, but it was often very difficult.”
Another difficulty, as with everything in the Canadian arts scene, is finding funding, and Mehta found that going from independent film to working with a bigger budget was actually not that radical a change. “I guess how it works in Canada is that you’re still having to go out every day and doing the same pushing and PR and marketing of ourselves,” says Mehta. “You have the support of the companies helping you of course, but a lot of it is still up to you. So you have to mobilize all you friends and networks.”
But Mehta knew he had a good product in his brother’s story. “I was hoping that people would react to the ending in the same way I did, and the short film proved that my reaction was actually quite common,” he explains. “There’s the story itself, which I think is universal. And witHin that 
I felt that there was a vehicle to try and get to my understanding of India, and that’s how it became a visual journey.”
Plus it was a chance for the filmmaker to explore the culture and country of his parents from his own perspective. “The film is based in India but my brother and I are writing it, so it’s a completely Canadian perspective,” he says. “I think the advantage of that is that we can use storytelling techniques that people here can identify with, and take them to a place that they’re unfamiliar with and may be uncomfortable with. I think it’s a privilege to do that and be a kind of cultural ambassador.”
But more than a cultural picture, Amal also offers a key perspective on our times, says Mehta. “The fundamental question the film is posing is what do you define as wealth and success? I think we do it as simply as we can [with this story] but that question can go as deep as you want on a personal level.”
Is this contributing to where I want to be, asks Mehta. And for him that means keeping in mind the reasons he became a filmmaker, through the highs of filming in the midst of 30 million people in New Delhi to raising money with power-players back home in Canada.
“There are times where a week of two of being that business guy, I ask myself: why am I doing this again? Am I doing it now for the sake of success? I’ve always thought that goal of this was sustainability and do what I just did, again. And maintain that process.”
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