Sibling duo behind celeb-favourite attar brand Boond, celebrates the success of their next collaboration—a short film that is winning awards at international film fests
A still from the film Thursday Special. Pic Courtesy/Krati Tandon
What does love look like when you’ve been married 27 years? What rituals do we create to keep that connection going when the days and years begin to blur together? And how do you keep going when life throws a curveball at these rituals? These questions are at the heart of the short film, Thursday Special, which recently won the Most Poetic Film award at the Küstendorf Film Festival in Serbia. The film has been directed by Andheri East filmmaker Varun Tandon and co-written by him and his sister Krati Tandon—the siblings behind the celebrity-favourite attar brand, Boond Fragrances.
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The 26-minute film, starring Anubha Fatehpuria and Ramakanth Dayama, is a tender depiction of an elderly couple with a shared passion for food, and a cherished Thursday ritual around it. “In 2017, I got this idea about an aged couple close to retirement and the small rituals they follow to help them get through the mundaneness of life. The idea just stuck with me. In 2020, I decided to finally make the film, but then the COVID pandemic happened,” says Varun, who has also won a National Award for his previous short film, Syaahi (available to watch for free on YouTube).
It was in this period in the lockdown, while they were stuck in their hometown in Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh, that the Tandon siblings would take the first steps towards two of their major collaborations: Boond and Thursday Special. They set up Boond in 2021 as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which had led to a slowdown in Kannauj’s traditional perfumery businesses.
The Tandon siblings, Varun and Krati
All the while, Thursday Special’s story was cooking in Varun’s mind. After years of bouncing ideas off each other, Krati officially came on board as co-writer in 2019. “I had been consulting on it for a while already, and it became very important for both of us to have a very clear female perspective, because the story has two protagonists and one of them is female,” Krati explains. “I think it’s interesting to have tension between the two people with no obvious answer as to who’s right and who’s wrong. Sometimes the situation is what it is. We wanted to be able to show that.”
“I don’t think there’s ever a script to which anybody will say, okay, this is already at 100 per cent, there are no changes needed,” says Varun, “So, in a way, this time [during the pandemic] really helped us to keep fine-tuning the film’s story.”
“It’s been a long journey. And we were doing other things in parallel,” says Krati, who also had her first baby six months back. “The baby only came into the picture during post-production. But during these years of writing, I got married, moved back to India, and we launched Boond,” she adds, laughing.
We ask them what it’s like to work together on two such different projects—one a business, and the other a creative expression. “I think there’s a creative comfort that we have and, obviously, an explicit trust because of which working together becomes really simple and natural,” Krati responds, “Even in past projects, we may not have officially partnered directly, but we have always consulted each other. So I think co-writing or even partnering for Boond wasn’t really this big formal decision; the project just pulled us together naturally.”
In both projects, the siblings are perfectly matched and complementary. While Varun brings the filmmaking chops to the table, Krati—an Indian School of Business alumna—brings the business knowhow.
The duo raised funds for the movie through family and friends, and began filming in February 2023. In June 2024, it premiered at the Mecal Pro, the Barcelona International Short and Animation Film Festival, and has since been screened in Australia, US, Canada, Turkey, Germany, Bangladesh, South Korea and, most recently, Serbia. The film has won a slew of awards on the film festival circuit, and the duo hope to eventually release it on an OTT platform for public viewing as well.
“Fortunately, the film speaks for itself. Right from the premiere onwards, it’s been selected by and nominated for some very prestigious festivals. And that has helped keep the buzz going,” says Krati, while the brother adds: “From making the film and to getting people to watch it, it’s a very long, multi-year journey. As independent filmmakers, our strategy has always been to not think too much about it. If you think too much about the challenges, you will just get overwhelmed.”
And they could never have imagined how much the film would resonate with one of Varun’s inspirations, Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica, who personally awarded him at the Küstendorf Film Festival. “There were only 15 films from all over the world that were playing there, and Thursday Special was the only one from Asia,” recalls Varun, “There weren’t many Indians in the audience, so I wasn’t sure how well the culture and humour in the film would translate. But I saw some women crying during the screening, and afterwards, a lot of people came up to me to talk about the film. I was already happy because I had got the response we had hoped for. Just to have Emir Kusturica watch it was an honour for me. And then when he came and personally announced that he liked it so much and would like to award it as the most poetic film of the festival, I couldn’t believe it.”
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