ANDA is the directorial debut of Jayendra Ganta. Despite it being his first film, he showed no fear in taking on something extremely conceptual and outlandish. There are really only about five set locations, yet the movie feels drastically bigger due to the surrealist ideas and some of the visuals. It, in short, follows an older woman, Norma, who has reconnected with her mother for the first time since her teenage years. This is hard to discern at first due to her mom appearing much younger than she should, even younger than Norma herself. It is revealed throughout the film how this is achieved with a special serum that involves a strange form of sacrifice, tied to Norse culture. Seemingly, a weird alien mummy is the key to procuring this elixir, and after a while of caring for it, one can sap it of the goo. This looks to be grown from a bird that is fed a certain diet to allow this, birds are a common image in the film. A story is told by Norma’s mother about a master who wanted control and got a bird, this did not work quite as expected so he ended up clipping the wings off of it, which made it more subservient to him. This is likely as it knew that even if it were let out of the cage, it still would never truly be free.
