We are slowly being reduced to data and my film points at how fast we are losing humanity, says writer-director Ishan Shukla whose film Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust is creating a buzz in the festival

Nonika Singh

Naysayers might consider animation a kids’ medium. But writer director Ishan Shukla whose film Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust won the NETPAC Award at International Film Festival at Rotterdam, dispels misconceptions associated with the fast evolving genre of animation. For one, his film was not part of the animation section, rather Rotterdam festival doesn’t have any such classification. Hence, Schirkoa is and was seen as pure cinema and adjudged the best Asian feature film by a jury from the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema.

I am creating a parallel world, not parallel country. My film is about rise and fall of humanity.

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In fact, Schirkoa is a rather complex film which recreates what appears to be a futuristic dystopian world. Ishan, however, views it as a mirror image of both the worlds we inhabit and we as a civilisation may be headed towards.

Since his characters in the film wear bags and go by numbers, we wonder if they symbolise the death of individuality. He explains, “We are slowly being reduced to data. My film also points at how fast we are losing humanity.”

Ishan creates not one but two worlds, one of which is a free world. Ideally, he would like to dwell in one where there are no rules. But as a creator he can also see the cracks in both. In his assertion, of how unification becomes a ruse to impose uniformity, one can sense an echo of the current climate in the country. But he insists, “Schirkoa is not bound to a certain period. It’s not about India but world at large.”

Incidentally, not just his film, his personal story too is interesting. He quit engineering during his third year as he saw no point in wasting time in acquiring a degree which would be “no more than a piece of paper”.

Schirkoa, also a graphic novel, is a logical extension of what he would do in the backbenches of his classroom. For someone who has deft mastery over technology he writes with a pen on paper. “While writing you can imagine the impossible,” he says.

The challenges of visualising what he has written come later and indeed there are quite a few. Funding is a major issue and often the gestation period runs into years. If his short film by the same name took four years in the making, the feature came about in five. His short film won many awards and did the entire festival circuit. After Rotterdam, Schirkoa will be screened at a film festival at Sweden.

But then Schirkoa is a not a regular animation feature. Ishan has not only used actual actors (motion capture technology) in the film, as movies like James Cameron’s Avatar have done, but voices of who’s who of the entertainment industry. Shekhar Kapur, Anurag Kashyap, Piyush Mishra, Karan Johar and international names like Golshifteh Farahani; many bigwigs have lent their voices to the battery of characters.

How did he manage to rope them all? It’s a long story. But the crux is that they all related to the idea. Support for animation too is forthcoming. Schirkoa for instance was supported by the NFDC and it was at its Film Bazaar that he found his French and German co-producers. No wonder, he is positive that the future of animation films is bright. In future, he is likely to make a movie that is not complete animation and might use it in parts. The subject that he has in his mind will have something to do with space. But as he has already proven with Schirkoa, rest assured it will not be a simple sci-fi.

Simplistic might work for others, he looks at the world through absurdist lens for, “It simplifies core themes.” And as he flips reality on its head and fantastical becomes the route for him, he takes viewers on a surreal journey with real and pressing concerns packed in. In Lies We Trust, goes the tagline of his film and he creates a beautiful one that is both visually compelling and intriguingly stimulating.