After the world premiere in Toronto, Nandita Das’ “Zwigato” had its Asian premiere at A Window on Asian Cinema in Busan.
Das made her directorial debut with Parting (2008), which debuted in Toronto. Her next film bow as director is ‘Manto’ (2018) at Cannes.
“Zwigato,” her third outing in the director’s seat, also bowed out in Toronto. It started life as a short film that was destined to be a part of an anthology produced by the Indian company Clap Entertainment. That project didn’t come to fruition, but clapper head Sameer Nair convinced Das to expand the idea into an advantage, which it did during India’s first two COVID-19 lockdowns. The film is a satire about the entrepreneurial economy, and it follows a factory manager who, after losing his job, becomes a courier for the Zwigato food delivery app.
“When I began to delve deeper into it, I was drawn to the human aspects of this combination of high technology and worker life, who are just a cog in the wheel. With the rise of the makeshift economy, the human-machine conflict that Chaplin depicted in Modern Times has turned into a struggle between Human and Algorithms”. diverse.
“During the pandemic, we consumers, for our convenience, have become more dependent on temporary job workers and less aware of their struggle. After a food delivery rider and his family, over four days he tells the story of this new urban India. The film is about the many little things that are hidden on the in plain sight,” added Das.
The cast includes famous talk show host Kapil Sharma, who plays against the genre, and acclaimed actress Shahana Goswami (“The Right Boy”), who previously starred in “Parting”. Goswami’s character is also forced to work to make ends meet.
“What attracted me besides the obvious temptations to work again with Nandita and the scenario I imagined, was Pratima’s character who is full of innocent hope and eager to try a new life legitimized by the difficult circumstances of her reality, despite the fact that her job requires cleaning toilets in a mall,” said Goswami. diverse.
nair said diverse: “We wanted to show both lenses – so there’s one about those invisible people we don’t know about, about the lives they lead and their economy at work, but the other from us too as consumers. It’s all too easy to get pissed off at the delivery guy who places the wrong order or comes late, But the world is completely different out there and it’s important to have a higher degree of consumer empathy toward all of these services. It’s not just about the big and bad companies, it’s about each of us, and how we relate to this entire economy and this entire workforce.”
Applause, a division of the $45 billion Aditya Birla Group, is known as one of the leading producers providing content to leading Indian broadcasters, including Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The company also produces films with a focus on the theatrical market.
“It is true that OTT [streaming] The platforms have made it possible for a more democratic distribution of content and have a much wider reach. But as a filmmaker, I also want people to have a more immersive theatrical experience. There is just something about the synchronization of a personal and a collective experience of watching a movie in a darkened hall. All the nuances that we painstakingly work on, whether it is in the story, image, sound, music, performances, etc., will be more noticeable. Having said that, the economics of showing movies in theaters only seems feasible for big budget movies,” said Das.
“For me, the combination of theatrical release and OTT would of course be ideal. But increasingly, audiences today are average neutral and mostly story-driven.” “Zwigato,” while being shown in India, is a worldwide story, and we hope the film will reach as many as possible from the public and to be guaranteed by the OTT channel.”
Nair said the applause is looking “very actively” for the theatrical release of “Zwigato”.
Meanwhile, Busan is a happy hunting ground for applause with the company’s first cinematic production, Aparna Sen’s The Rapist, which won the coveted Kim Ji-seok award at the festival in 2021.
“It’s the place to show a cinema of this kind – you get the right kind of response. I think it’s a great platform,” Nair said.
“Zwigato” premieres on October 6 in Busan.
