Break Free: An Interview with Abhi Tundel

Please tell us about the projects you worked on before making ‘Break Free’. How did you start, and how did you learn to make films?

I grew up in Ahmedabad and started making videos as a teenager. For a few years, I had a fairly visible presence on youtube, putting out sketches, personal vlogs, and odd little experiments that found their own audience. It taught me a lot about rhythm, tone, and how to communicate something that feels like you. but everything changed when i made my first short film ‘Scar Tissue’. It was a much more internal, vulnerable process, and it shifted something in me. I started moving away from internet content and leaned fully into filmmaking. between 2014 and 2017, i made a number of experimental shorts, small, quiet pieces that helped me shape my voice. In 2017, I moved to Mumbai to study film. The experience wasn’t perfect, but it gave me time to commit to the path. filmmaking became not just what i do, but how i make sense of everything.

Tell us about ‘Break Free’. How do you describe it?

Break Free was created as part of the India Film Project’s 50-hour filmmaking challenge, under the theme “Feels Like a Queen.” Conceived, shot, and completed within that tight window, the film was a raw, intuitive response to a prompt that immediately made my partner “Navin Noronha” the writer of the film think of the queer icon, of course, Queen. The title Break Free is a direct nod to the legendary anthem by Queen and its powerful associations with queer liberation and self-expression. That connection set the tone for a film about reclaiming space, shedding layers of shame, and stepping into authenticity, even when it’s uncomfortable or confrontational. This project is deeply personal, exploring sovereignty over the self: a kind of queendom that’s not about external validation but about claiming your right to exist and be seen, fully and unapologetically. My aim was to create a film that feels intimate and universal at once, a visual and emotional landscape where vulnerability and power are intertwined. For me, filmmaking is a form of truth-telling. Break Free is one such truth, distilled in 50 wild, transformative hours.

Please tell us about your favorite filmmakers.

I'm drawn to filmmakers who explore identity through quiet tension, absence, and subtle resistance. Kim Bora's Recorder Exam holds so much ache without overstating it. Jafar Panahi’s Ayneh showed me how breaking form can still reveal deeper truth. and Shyam Benegal’s Mammo moved me with how it treated memory, displacement, and care with such tenderness and complexity. I also think a lot about absence, about not seeing people like me on screen or behind the camera. queer, DBA, outside the center. So my work is often a response to that silence. An insistence on being here, even if no one asked me to be.

If you were given a good budget, what would be your ideal project?

If I had a real budget, I'd use it to build something that doesn’t usually get funded. A film led by queer and caste-oppressed voices, not just on screen but behind the camera too. I'm interested in making work that looks like it doesn’t belong in “Indian cinema” as people define it. Maybe something quiet and surreal, maybe something loud and angry, but either way, deeply political. I’d want to work with people who’ve never had access but always had vision. The kind of project where care, discomfort, and clarity all live in the same frame. Not slick, not apologetic, something that says we were always here, and this is what our world could look like if you got out of the way.

Describe how you would ensure that production is on schedule. What steps would you take?

I try to work with people who understand urgency, but not panic. I don't believe in overplanning every moment, especially when you’re working with emotion-heavy material or small budgets. That said, I always build a tight schedule with space for improvisation. I treat time like a creative tool, not just a checklist. I also take care of my crew. If people feel respected and safe, things move better. I make sure everyone knows what we’re trying to say with the film, so we’re all aligned beyond the timeline. and if something slips, we adapt. Because sometimes a delay means something real is happening, and that’s worth holding space for.

What was the hardest part of making ‘Break Free’.

The hardest part was that everything happened at once. The film was made in 50 hours, so there was no room to overthink, no time to refine or step back. I usually like to sit with a script and let it unfold slowly, but this one had to come from instinct. it was emotionally intense and personally close, which made the pressure feel heavier. We had no budget, no proper equipment, no elaborate setup. just two actors, one room, and a lot of dialogue. it was difficult to trust that would be enough. It felt exposed, but maybe that was the point. The film deals with queerness, shame, performance, and power, and I was asking the actors to hold all of that in a very stripped-down, intimate frame. Doing that while also producing, directing, and sometimes even holding the boom mic pushed me to my edge. but in a way, the constraints shaped the honesty. The discomfort became part of the film’s language.

If possible, tell us about your next work. What plans do you have for your future work?

My next film is titled ‘Santa Baby'. It is quiet but emotionally charged, a film about things people carry and never say.It unfolds like a play, but cinematically restrained, everything feels delicate, like the characters are trying not to break each other. It’s a film about presence, love, and the quiet decisions we make when no one’s watching. Nothing explodes, but everything shifts.