The Taste of Mango: “As the process of making the film went on, my anger turned into love and empathy”

In her first feature The Taste of Mango, Sri Lankan-British director Chloe Abrahams excavates a matrilineal history of abuse within her own family via hypnotic handheld camera and intimate recollections. It was shot sporadically for five years, and in that time Abrahams contextualises her and her mother Rozana’s strained relationship to Abrahams’ grandmother Jean, who – due to societal pressure in Sri Lanka – chose to stay married to her long-term husband following his conviction as a sex offender, even after he also abused Rozana.

Prior to making The Taste of Mango, Abrahams worked in more experimental film. In 2018 she made a two-channel video piece called Mama, which saw her and her sister re-enact a conversation between her mother and aunt from a transcript of an intimate conversation about her aunt’s kidnap. In 2022, Abrahams showed a new video piece at the Whitechapel Gallery titled And Then It Got a Bit Weird, which turned a voice note to a friend from the night Abrahams had her drink spiked into a monologue performed by actors over Zoom.

Now, armed with a Sony camcorder and unending curiosity, her feature debut – which won the Best Documentary Audience Award at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival – is a frank confrontation with sexual violence, patriarchy and processes of healing.

Rógan Graham: Do you think that the presence of the camera impacted your grandmother’s decision to leave her husband towards the end of the film?

Chloe Abrahams: It’s hard to know, because we don’t know what the outcome would have been if I hadn’t made the film. I think the process of making the film and my desire to spend more time with her, ask her questions… these were things that I hadn’t made time for before. We had thought more in more black and white terms about the decisions that my grandma had made. And I think taking the time to be with her and listen to her and ask her questions and make her feel seen and not as judged, as we maybe were judging her before […] did help that final decision.

What sparked that desire to look at the women in your family beyond their relationship to you?

Speaking to a lot of people, I think there’s something that seems to happen in your early twenties, where you start to see your parents as more complex and flawed human beings. That was what happened when I was in my early twenties and just forming more of my own identity and trying to understand who I was. In all of my works, I feel the need to go inwards and excavate my past, my family, as a way to understand myself and any difficult situations that I’ve been through.

What kind of questions were you asking yourself to get the balance between telling your truth as an artist and doing right by your family?

The film evolved so much throughout those five years. And because the editing was taking place concurrently with shooting, it was an ever evolving narrative. The impetus for making it was coming from a lot of anger and wanting answers and wanting to blame people and wanting people to apologise.

As the process of making the film went on, I changed and my anger turned into love and empathy. I still felt complicated towards my grandma, but I was able to see her as a fuller, more complex being who had made decisions in the context of wider social norms. Still wanting her to take accountability and knowing that she had agency, but just understanding the context more. I didn’t want people to come away feeling only angry with her.

The process of getting it there was through a lot of feedback screenings and sharing it with people who didn’t know me, who didn’t know anything about the family, the story. With the feedback I really try to ask questions about what people feel at various points in the film or at the end of the film, and not specific editing notes or whatever.

And so it was a constant balance and push and pull, even just removing one sentence that she says that tipped people in one direction or the other.

There are going to be filmmakers who watch this film and feel like there’s something achievable in it, with the camcorder and personal story, but then not necessarily thinking through that kind of wellness aspect. What have you learned that you would pass on?

I think checking in with yourself and trying to get to know yourself better and knowing what tools you need to do it. For some people, it’s therapy. For others, it’s making sure you have a swim every day. For others, it’s making sure you have a great social network and people to talk to frequently. Sometimes people are like, “Get a therapist,” but it’s not for everyone. So I think understanding what you need to feel grounded and that you can keep coming back to.

What helped me – especially in the filmmaking journey of constant rejection, applying for funding, and especially with such a personal film, when each rejection feels so personal – was I have an incredible partner. He reminded me to keep going back to my intention and why I wanted to make the film, and reconnecting with that feeling that I had. 

With women artists and otherwise marginalised artists making personal work, there’s then that extra layer of having to cannibalise those experiences in applications. As you said it was difficult getting the money together for this film – is there any comment you want to make on how that operates in the UK?

It’s tough. It’s really hard. I mean, there’s not a lot of options in the UK for funding. The main one being BFI Doc Society. And as they’re pretty much the only one, it’s so competitive. It took me five applications before getting a successful answer; that was only when I already had a rough cut. So that was really the first big money in – for three to four years, it was just chugging along while I was working a full time job. It’s not easy. 

Like you said, I think trying to use your story to sell it in funding applications can feel really gross, and I don’t really have any advice other than maybe look at it a bit cynically and be one step removed from it. Because for now, that’s the only way to get it funded. I would love to say that we should just rethink the whole way that films, especially docs, are funded in the UK, but for now, this is how it is.

That’s a really interesting point – the cynicism in the application and not necessarily the work.

There’s a definite distinction between the fundraising application and then the film that you want to make. I think funders know that, too. In hindsight, even though it was very hard at the time getting those rejections, I’m quite glad that it took until I had a rough cut to get funding – because inevitably, once you get people involved with money, there are different kinds of pulls in different directions for what people want the film to be creatively. I think I wasn’t sure enough of what the film was before that point. I could have been very malleable and moved too much in directions that weren’t mine.

I think for personal filmmaking, if you are able to keep things small at the beginning, if you don’t have any funding, just keep going as much as you can. Until you feel sure in your vision. I think that’s a good place to be.

The Taste of Mango, backed by the BFI Doc Society, is in cinemas from 29 November.