‘Vanya’ review: An elderly man fights forced relocation in timely, uneven Indian drama

Dir/scr: Badiger Devendra. India. 2025. 98mins

In Badiger Devendra’s timely yet disjointed Vanya, actor Vaijanath Biradar turns in a strong performance as an elderly man who refuses to be relocated from his ancestral forest home. The film, which premieres in Goa’s Indian Panorama, turns a spotlight on the frequent displacement of tribal peoples in India’s most lush settings, allegedly to make space for national parks and lucrative high-end hotels for affluent tourists. 

Engages on a visceral level by tapping into our collective conscience

In touching on issues of land rights and their connection to identity and culture, writer-director Devendra has plenty of salient points to make. Yet the execution is tonally uneven, loaded up with abrupt transitions and some jarring editing, and the film is often hampered by its made-for-television pacing, meaning it whips from plot point to plot point at lightning speed. Devendra has opted for making a statement, rather than making art.

Kannada filmmaker Devendra’s rape revenge thriller Rudri (2020) hit a nerve at home in India and with some festivals, as did his follow-up, the psychological lockdown drama In (2021). Once again turning his attention to marginalised voices, Devendra based Vanya on a 2010 magazine article about a father and daughter that fought to protect their forest home from the lumber trade and the corrupt politicians who prop it up. Conservation and tribal land rights are issues currently resonating around the globe, and the material may carry Vanya through overseas festivals after its December release on home soil, where it will likely find the most responsive audiences.

Vanya begins in a small forest village in southwestern Karnataka, where village elder Kariyappa (Biradar) goes about his business of selling spices and putting the local thug Rudra (Yeshwanth Kuchbal) in his place. A widower, he’s lived alone in his mud hut since his daughter Paddu (Meghana Belawadi) set out for the lights of Bengaluru years before, vowing never to return to “that forest.” Kariyappa is popular enough, but mostly keeps to himself. 

That changes when a developer from the city (Ashwin Hassan) shows up with orders from a garden variety mid-level bureaucrat to vacate the land. He’s offering every owner in the village cash for their land or a similar sized plot 10 kilometres away, and most agree to what is essentially a forced relocation. Everyone except for Kariyappa. His steadfast refusal to leave leads to harassment, coercion, having his family leveraged against him and finally a legal challenge that goes all the way to courts in New Delhi. 

Despite the awkward structure, a few too many on-the-nose songs, Sriamachandra Hadapada’s egregious score and multiple performances turned up to 11, Vanya manages to engage on a visceral level by tapping into our collective conscience. What the minister and the businessmen are doing is wrong, and we all feel it as much as witness it in their moustache-twirling. Cinematographer Alan Bharath doesn’t exploit the beauty of the film’s natural surroundings nearly enough, but he does draw an affecting visual dividing line between the hazy, grey city where Paddu lives  and Kariyappa’s verdant green forest. 

When he’s not yelling or being overly mannered, Biradar is a sympathetic figure who embodies groups in every corner of the globe that are oppressed or exploited by governments, corporations or both. But the film’s best moments come when Biradar and Belawadi take it down a notch, such as when Kariyappa explains to his estranged daughter why he can’t leave the forest, or when Paddu admits how hard her life in Bangalore is, and that she’s essentially selling out her father for the sake of her own daughter. Both make valid, understandable points that don’t demand heightened emotionalist; the family dynamic peaks in these sequences and gives the closing frames real punch.