{"id":149606,"date":"2025-11-24T02:55:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T02:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/149606\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T02:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T02:55:07","slug":"psychological-horror-no-onions-debuts-at-waves-film-bazaar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/149606\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychological Horror ‘No Onions’ Debuts at WAVES Film Bazaar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSet within the charged social landscape of Ahmedabad, writer-director Aarti Neharsh\u2019s debut feature \u201cKanda\u201d or \u201cNo Onions<\/a>\u201d uses psychological horror to probe questions of purity, caste and domestic control.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film has Shakun Batra (\u201cGehraiyaan\u201d) of Jouska Films and Dimpy Agrawal of Gubbara Entertainment<\/a> (co-producer \u201cShadowbox,\u201d Perspectives at Berlinale 2025) attached as co-producers. \u201cNo Onions\u201d has been pre-selected for the Sundance Development Track and is currently in late development. With partial funding in place, the filmmakers are seeking co-producers, financiers and sales partners at WAVES Film Bazaar<\/a> \u2013 the market component of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI<\/a>) \u2013 with the goal of moving into pre-production mid-2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNeharsh\u2019s script follows a pregnant woman whose growing cravings for foods forbidden in her faith begin to disrupt the order and ritual of her devout household. As her desires intensify, long-standing codes of discipline \u2014 dietary, religious, and familial \u2014 start to crack, revealing the buried tensions within a seemingly harmonious home.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Neharsh, the story is deeply personal. Raised in Ahmedabad, she recalls the quiet but rigid practices of purity woven into everyday life. \u201cI remember friends sitting apart during lunch, refusing to touch certain tiffins; women being isolated during their periods even in the most \u201cmodern\u201d homes. Ahmedabad itself \u2014 with its segregated markets, \u201cpure veg\u201d tables, and invisible social divides \u2014 carries this obsession of purity. Only later did I realise how deeply that was tied to caste and a social segregation of people,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWith \u201cNo Onions\u201d, she reframes vegetarianism, often understood internationally as an ethical lifestyle, through the Indian lens of caste purity and religious discipline. \u201cNo Onions\u201d aims to be a slow-burning psychological-horror that turns the domesticity of a house into a stage for an eerie unravelling while asking whether the hunger of a woman, or the order that seeks to crush it is more horrifying.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeharsh approaches the film as a genre piece rooted in the rhythms of domestic life. She says, \u201cI\u2019ve always been drawn to genre films, especially Korean horrors, because they allow you to explore deeply personal and social ideas within an engaging, cinematic frame. That\u2019s what I wanted to do with my debut feature.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHer debut short \u201cThe Song We Sang\u201d, also set in Ahmedabad, had a successful festival run, winning awards at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, Dharamshala International Film Festival, and a Special Jury Mention at the London Indian Film Festival. Neharsh has been directing commercials alongside developing her feature debut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Set within the charged social landscape of Ahmedabad, writer-director Aarti Neharsh\u2019s debut feature \u201cKanda\u201d or \u201cNo Onions\u201d uses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,91439,87384,85,46,91440,91441],"class_list":{"0":"post-149606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gubbara-entertainment","10":"tag-iffi","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-no-onions","14":"tag-waves-film-bazaar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}