‘Pooja, Sir’: Hamburg Review

Dir: Deepak Rauniyar. Nepal/US/Norway. 2024. 118mins 

The investigation into two kidnapped boys becomes increasingly personal for the detective assigned to the case in Pooja, Sir, a spare, affecting thriller. Inspired by the protests orchestrated in 2015 in Nepal by disenfranchised ethnic minority community the Madhesi, director Deepak Rauniyar has crafted a film powered by a sense of outrage and sorrow at a nation riven by sexism and bigotry. The story’s inherently emotional underpinnings are made more overt by the casting of Rauniyar’s wife — actress, producer, co-writer and frequent collaborator Asha Magrati — who plays the resolute cop determined to find these missing children, even as she navigates a society disinclined to help her.

The story focuses primarily on the ethnic divisions within Nepal 

After premiering in Venice’s Horizons, this procedural screens in Hamburg before travelling to Busan. Pooja, Sir is the director’s first feature since 2016’s White Sun, which touched on the Nepalese civil war and also made its debut in Venice, taking home the Interfilm Award before travelling to Toronto and Rotterdam. The new film’s crime narrative will make this an attractive festival proposition, with future theatrical prospects certainly possible. 

In the border town of Rajagunj, two boys — one, the son of a prominent politician — have been abducted. Sent from Kathmandu to investigate, police detective Pooja (Magrati) immediately receives interference from the locals. Some are shocked to be dealing with a female detective, while others refuse to assist because they are part of the Madhesi who, after a decade of civil war, distrust a Nepalese government that has further marginalised them through the country’s new constitution. Pooja, who is from the Pahadi community, must work with local Madhesi cop Mamata (Nikita Chandak), who understands community tensions which have led to widespread protests and deaths.

Discrimination of all forms infuses Pooja, Sir, whose title is but one indication of the prejudices at the film’s centre. With her short hair and refusal to behave in an overtly ’feminine’ manner, Pooja alarms Rajagunj’s uptight men, a tension she only exacerbates by insisting on being addressed as “sir,” not “ma’am.” (One wonders how the townspeople would react if they knew Pooja is gay, occasionally FaceTiming with her lover back in Kathmandu.) 

But while the film pays close attention to Rajagunj’s rampant misogyny, the story focuses primarily on the ethnic divisions within Nepal — divisions Rauniyar and his wife know firsthand; the director is himself Madhesi, while Magrati is Pahadi. In Nepal, these two ethnic groups do not even speak the same language, and Pooja, Sir illustrates how difficult it is for this lighter-skinned female detective to get to the bottom of the kidnapping when the local Madhesis have understandably learned to distrust those who look like her. The no-nonsense Pooja faces her share of sexism but, as she works alongside Mamata, she begins to grasp just how much racism the Madhesis have endured. In a sense, Pooja is both oppressed and oppressor — although, ironically, the Pahadi people are themselves viewed as one of Nepal’s ‘lesser’ communities. 

Wearing dark sunglasses and a stoic expression, Magrati is a striking presence, and Pooja, Sir follows its protagonist’s lead, preferring a stripped-down approach to the story in which the violent Madhesi protests form a crucial background. Occasionally, the narrative’s conscious lack of electricity can cause the picture to feel like an underpowered but well-intentioned social commentary. Yet the set pieces are handled with taut efficiency, the suspense emanating from the naturalism of the execution. 

Rauniyar has twists in store, but none feel flagrant or manipulative. And in the tradition of great detective films, Pooja, Sir builds to a resolution that does more than simply answer whodunit. Rather, the outcome profoundly changes its redoubtable hero. Pooja will eventually discover what has become of these kidnapped boys, but the larger systemic issues that created that crisis are much tougher to solve.