Hunter's Moon screened at the Dharamshala Film Festival 2026.
Ridham Janve directed Hunter's Moon.
Set in the mighty Upper Dhauladhars, the film explores the complicated man-nature dynamic in a volatile tale.
Early in Hunter’s Moon, the eponymous hunter talks at length about his prey. Skulking the desolation of the Upper Dhauladhar mountain ranges, he tends to hum for the animal he has just felled. “It eases their dying”, Jarm Singh (Chamel Singh) gently insists. Ridham Janve’s film is a wondrous, wrenching comment on mankind’s desperate overreach and the consequences that creep up. It is the rare kind of movie that undercuts its streaks of violence with pause and reflection. Every vicious act is held up to scrutiny and receives an answer in some way or the other.
Hosting its India premiere at the Dharamshala Film Festival, Janve’s sophomore prises anxiety, despair, greed and brutish instincts from a primal clash. The drama interweaving and splitting humans and nature exacts its own price. Man has the hubris to think he can pilfer and pillage endlessly from nature’s vassals. That comes at a cost. Jarm stores the scraps of meat at several hideouts before lugging them back home to keep his family afloat.
In the remote heights, the hunter cuts a solitary figure. Through a voiceover, he talks of his liminal position. He’s perennially torn between the village and the forest. His father would remind him that the village and the forest are two different worlds. He ought never to mix them. But he struggles. When home with his family, Jarm starts missing the wilderness and vice versa. Is there a yen for anchorage? He wishes at times that he were a farmer or a labourer. His chosen profession consigns him isolation. He swoops in and out of the house, ensuring his family’s needs are met. Often, he disappoints, acknowledging that they have to hang tight for a little longer till his next kill. His wife (Saroj Kumari) is the one left to weather his vagaries.
Her fortitude keeps the family intact. Kumari’s stoic front lobs off the many slights villagers make regarding her husband. They question her for waiting for a man who wilfully abandons his family. She’s urged not to waste away in hope and such volatility. Every now and then, he just returns for the night and is gone by dawn. His daughters don’t even get to see him. The hunter’s life is marked by a refusal of the social order. He lives and works outside the web. His wife has to handle the mediation with the villagers. She balances between his resources and domestic needs. Neither can afford to have big dreams. All they can is try to push from one day to the next.
Along with DP Mehul Bhanti, Janve isn’t one to indulge in pastoral romanticism. The grit of sourcing daily sustenance is the predominating urgency. The hunter shuffles from one camp to the next, scouting for the next kill. He lives ducked in a cave. Hunter’s Moon opens with his eagle-eyed precision, the patient, unstinting observation in the act. With steady attention, it tracks the hunter’s pursuits. He must move stealthily, perfect the art of stillness.
Janve and his editor, Amit Dutta, set up a philosophical enquiry through a carefully honed rhythm. The first stretch of the film entirely underpins itself on the hunter. No other soul can be seen in the distance. The hunter admits “it’s easy to get lost” in the wild. He is aware of his own diminutiveness in the grand scale of things, underlining “the mountain doesn’t even know I exist.” Being alone helps him get closer to himself, discover who he is. Jarm remarks with great reverence on the spirits contained in the meat. Yet, a negotiation with the social fabric never entirely lets him retreat into a fully formed silo. At least, there is a sense of repetition in the rites of hunting Jarm has sidled into. This gets a jolt when a prowler has made away with his meat. The stakes ratchet up dramatically.
The hunter hasn’t fully been able to sever his link from civilisation. There are others passing by, furtively keeping watch. His path isn’t as isolated as he would like to believe. Voiceovers punctuate sporadically. This stream of inner thought switches from the hunter to the thief in a seamless way. A hide and seek erupts into a full-blown spate of hostilities. Jarm charges at him. Hunter’s Moon turns from a tight trail to being viscously textured with the greed, nastiness and excess of men getting in each other’s ways. Janve pulls off the one-upmanship with knowing relish, but also a sighing conceding to the merciless ways in which nature extracts from its violators. Desire can turn lethal quickly. In the cross wire of hidden motives and agenda, there are bound to be casualties. The mountains, often a refuge for the hunter, a provider, are just as hazardous a site. Janve deftly orchestrates tension and mercurial edges in relationships. People who promise shelter emerge as legitimate threats. Amidst scarcity, man stops at nothing to latch on for more.
