An Echo of the Eternal: Love, Folklore & War in 'Secret of a Mountain Serpent'
Set in the 90s amid the Kargil War, Nidhi Saxena's second film is an ode to the individual and the mystic feminine.
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Everybody has at least one story, one cinema within them. So, the true test of a storyteller, a filmmaker, is not their debut work but the one that follows. Nidhi Saxena’s first film, a very personal tale, captured the imagination of cinephiles through its poetic storytelling. Now, her second film, Secret of a Mountain Serpent, with its folkloric imagination, mythical sensibility, lyrical approach, and political consciousness, establishes that a unique voice has emerged from India in the world cine-scape.
The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival 2025 on Thursday, 28 August, as the opening film in the Biennale College Cinema section. Secret of a Mountain Serpent is the director’s second feature film, the earlier one being Sad Letters of an Imaginary Woman which premiered at Busan International Film Festival, 2024.
The project is funded by Venice’s Biennale College Cinema programme, and Saxena is the first Indian woman to win this grant.
A Distinctive Cinematic Voice
While Indie cine-scape has several new talents emerging with top-notch cinematic articulation and ideas that deal with the complexity of human condition, and lock horns with socio-political powers, Saxena stands apart and above because of her mythical sensibility and folkloric imagination.
The symbolism and metaphors in Secret of a Mountain Serpent are not just cinematic and literary devices, nor merely an aesthetic approach.
As a result, the personal becomes universal, and a political and psychological drama turns into a deep dive into the mysterious world of human inscape, and into the messy truths of human life, the world order, and the conflict between the two.
Secret of a Mountain Serpent is set in the late 90s, during the Kargil War, in a misty mountain village, and tells the story of lack and longing, neglect and negotiation in the lives of women.
Folklore, Myth and the Feminine
According to an ancient legend, a woman was once caught by a snake while crossing the village river. The woman said to the snake, “if you let me go then you can have my daughter”. The snake let her go. But the promise was not kept. The snake has been waiting ever since, so the legend says. Thus, the women of the village are not allowed to enter the river.
The other thing we learn about this village is that most men from here enrol in the army to serve the country. They move to the borders, leaving their wives and children back in the village.
Barkha, played by Trimala Adhikari, is married to, Sudhir (Pushpendra Singh) who works for the Indian Army. When he and several other men leave the village to fight the war, the village women begin to see the legendary snake on their paths. Around the same time Barkha meets a mysterious man named Manik, played by Adil Hussain, with whom she forms a bond. Though not told explicitly, it is implied that Manik is the snake in human form.
In the celebrated play, which is based on a folk tale, a woman in a loveless marriage gets intimate with a snake who comes in the form of her husband. The folktale that inspired Karnad has a twin-tale in another part of the country which inspired Mani Kaul to make a film based on it, titled Duvidha, in which a ghost comes in the form of husband and initiates intimacy with the woman.
While Karnad’s play and Mani Kaul’s film are a strong social comment on the state of women in a patriarchal society and uphold the women’s right to have and choose love, Secret of a Mountain Serpent centers women’s state and through that makes not only a social commentary but also a political commentary that takes a strong and sharp anti-war stance by underlining the price paid by common people because of war.
Sudhir is posted in a place that has no postal service. When he informs Barkha about this at the time of his departure, she says, “main pedon sey keh doongi, tum chidiyon sey sun lena” (I will speak through the trees, and you listen through the birds.)
In the following sequence we see striking images where the camera tilts up and as it moves from earth to the sky, the chirping of the birds slowly and silently get eclipsed by the sound of aeroplanes. Such images of tense sight and sound are repeated time and again to show an emerging gap between the sender and the receiver, the husband and the wife. This also becomes a comment about the war coming in the way of a relationship, in the way of intimacy, in the way of love.
In an unforgettable scene we see a bird entering the tent where Sudhir is with his fellows. The bird delivers the message to Sudhir in the voice of Barkha. Soon, many birds enter the tent and deliver messages in different voices. They are heard by the Sudhir’s colleagues.
A similar pattern is created when Barkha goes to meet Manik for the first time. She is wearing shoes gifted by Sudhir. As she walks, the shoe starts speaking to her. “Come back home, come back home,” it repeats in a male voice. She pauses for a while after every two steps, gives a thought and then takes the next step ahead. At times she takes a step backward for every two steps marched ahead.
She struggles being caught between the need for a touch of love and the conditioning of the society, and is pulled in opposite directions by the voice of the life and the voice of the world. The filmmaker intercuts Barkha’s hesitant forward movement with shots of several women from the village walking with similar shoes and everyone being asked by the shoe to return home.
Amor, the Individual, and the System
When Barkha makes her choice, to nurture the relation with Manik Guho, it is driven by the strength of Amor. The force of Amor has always been recognised as one that is contrary to everything that the Church (establishment) stood for. Amor is personal, individual experience. Barkha is married to Sudhir, who works for the army. In both systems – marriage and military- the individual is eclipsed. It is only Amor that breaks away from the monolithic systems and accents the individual. Barkha makes that choice by choosing to walk to Manik Guho.
When Sudhir realises “something is fishy”, it turns him restless. We see him restlessly walking right to left in the woods. While he walks to right, the camera tracks to the left and while he walks to the left, the camera tracks to the right. Clearly, the filmmaker and her camera are not with Sudhir, for he is a representative of the system. The scene ends when the camera stops on Barkha while she is embracing the tree. That clarifies what the film prioritises - the individual experience guided by the force of Amor, deviating from monolithic systems.
Even when the villagers find a snake in the middle of the night and decide to kill it, the filmmaker shows us the visuals of Manik trying to escape, and overlaps the images with the sound of women crying. This is followed by visuals of women consoling one another. The filmmaker’s gaze and heart are always on and with the experience of individuals who negotiate with life to have an experience of life as humans.
Though the characters do not subvert or dismantle the system, they do snatch from the clutches of the world, some moments of meaningful existence that are marked by love, small memories of amor to hold on to, and the liberty to immerse oneself in the flowing river without any inhibitions and without any binding.
Craft, Sound, and Poetic Realism
The vision of the director has been achieved successfully with the creative communion of the entire team. Delicate cinematography by Vikas Urs and Archana Ghangrekar, and Saman Alvitigala’s breezy editing are remarkable. However, it is Niraj Gera’s sound design that escalates the magic of this film. He certainly deserves extra applause. In total, the entire team of Secret of a Mountain Serpent, come together to give an experience that is close to music. But while doing so, they do not miss the gravitation of reality.
Taking a slight departure from realism, Secret of a Mountain Serpent clarifies reality in a meditative way. Nidhi Saxena, through her folkloric imagination and mythical sensibilities, moves away from literal truths and factual truths to speak truth and a half.
(Samvartha Sahil is a writer and translator based out of Manipal, Karnataka. He teaches screenplay writing courses at FTII, Pune, and is the recipient of Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship 2022-23. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)