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Genre bender

Basking in the glory of ‘Black Warrant’, director Vikramaditya Motwane feels the best stories are told when fact blends with fiction
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Motwane feels that when you keep the character at the centre of your work, the actors bring in as much to the table. Photo courtesy: Netflix
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Audiences can’t stop raving about Netflix series ‘Black Warrant’. Critics have unanimously given it a thumbs-up. The incisive and searing prison drama is indeed one of the best series of not just 2025, which has begun well for OTT, but is likely to find a permanent place in streaming history. In fact, its director-creator, Vikramaditya Motwane, has always been synonymous with both excellence and unusual creativity. But what happens when two creative minds, Motwane and Satyanshu Singh of ‘Chintu Ka Birthday’ fame, come together as co-creators. Both makers (Singh, apart from being a writer and filmmaker, is a professor of cinema) are different people. Motwane recalls how initially they had differences on how to adapt the book ‘Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer’, on which the series is based.

While Motwane wanted all of the 200 pages to be compressed in one season, Singh wanted to build the main protagonist Sunil Gupta’s character. Clearly, Singh prevailed and Motwane is glad they made viewers “feel” this unlikely protagonist, “who may/may not become your hero”. If, for Motwane, stranger-than-fiction facts are “a great hook to engage audiences”, Singh feels that “when the story at hand is incredible and dramatic, audiences are all agog”.

However, as they were only focusing on four years of ex-jailer Gupta’s life, they had to fictionalise some bits. They did their own research, incorporating true incidents outside of the book, but without compromising on the human lens of the book. Indeed, when fact meets fiction, one could be on a sticky wicket. But Motwane, a huge fan of fact as well as ‘a history buff’, feels, “The best stories are told when fact blends with fiction.” For Singh, one major challenge was that while he was writing about a younger Sunil, he was talking to the senior one. However, the fact that Sunil was there to guide them, is both the co-author and the main hero, wasn’t a hindrance. They say in unison, “He trusted our process completely.”

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As for Motwane’s offbeat ways of creating realistic, complex and nuanced cinema, we wonder if that is a tough combination to achieve. He says, “Not quite, for this is the world I inhabit and navigate constantly.” Indeed, streaming platforms allow makers to tell stories in a more dense and complex fashion.

For someone who has always been a critics’ darling, yet did not find too many audiences in cinema halls, is OTT a more liberating space? Motwane, whose work since 2018 has mostly landed on OTT, not by design though, says, “Even when I was making films like ‘Udaan’ and ‘Lootera’, theatres were only a window. These films would have had a life outside of those spaces and select viewers would have anyway watched it.” The OTT platforms have made it more accessible for them, but he has never underestimated audiences. “Even in a big budget film, provided you don’t alienate/isolate viewers, they like to be challenged,” he quips.

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If Motwane’s storytelling is captivating, his casting process is equally fascinating as he presents actors (Sonakshi Sinha in ‘Lootera’, Ananya Panday in ‘CTRL’) in a new avatar each time. For this triumph of pitch-perfect casting, he gives credit to his casting directors. He shares, “Often, I don’t even know who is auditioning and for which part. For instance, I had no idea Zahan Kapoor was being considered for Sunil’s part. Had I known Aparshakti Khurana was in contention for ‘Jubilee’, I would have probably told my casting director to not bother because even I thought he only did comedy.” But he is as pleasantly surprised by the results as the audiences when they watch some of their favourite actors take a new turn.

Character building is the holy grail for Motwane. “When you keep the character at the centre of your work, the actors are as excited and bring as much to the table. I don’t tell them yahi karo (this is what you do),” he asserts.

Zahan Kapoor as Sunil Kumar Gupta in 'Black Warrant'. Photo courtesy: Netflix

He, along with Anurag Kashyap, gave us ‘Sacred Games’, Netflix’s first Indian original web series, and agrees that Indian content has evolved for the better. “It now comprises a vast range — from crime to comedy, police procedural to legal dramas, cricket series to musical ones to creating fictional towns,” he reminds. “Twenty years ago, where would you have seen such variety?” And yet, he is surprised “why no one ever thought of making a prison drama in India”. Thus, to those who may not have caught up with ‘Black Warrant’, he says with all modesty and honesty: “Watch it, for nothing like this — a jail from a jailer’s perspective — has been seen before.” While the series is packed with many takeaways on our justice system, he wants the audiences to soak in the immersive tale and maybe spare a thought for the deplorable conditions in jails.

While Motwane is known for being genre agnostic, or in his words, “loves genre hopping”, he agrees that crime series truly work. “Maybe it’s the new escapism, a break from our mundane reality. If people go to theatres for song and dance, the suspension of disbelief, probably they turn to crime series for the same feeling on OTT. Besides, I think the world of OTT allows true crime stories to be fleshed out better.”

For the gifted director, who has always broken the mould, there aren’t really any generalisations or formulas. As he puts it, “Every success that you see, be it ‘Sholay’ or any other, is about breaking the trend. It’s a formula till it fails. So, why follow it?”

In a world moving faster than trends, Motwane would not merely tread a path hitherto not taken, but forge his own. En route, he transports viewers into a newer ecosystem, unfailingly and unerringly.

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