Crowd-funding a debut thriller

A mother-son relationship and a murder mystery — ‘Kaisi Ye Paheli’ (KYP) by debutant director Ananyabrata Chakravorty, that hit the theatres this Friday, is an interesting amalgamation of many such dichotomous elements. The film’s theme is loneliness but the genre is dark comedy. It opens with a bizarre premise: a lonely mother forced to solve a crime just so she can talk to her estranged son, who is a cop.

The slow-burn murder mystery set in Sikkim has quite a few autobiographical shades. “My mother had been struggling with loneliness after I lost my father. My quitting a secure IT job to pursue my writing dreams only added to the tension. Our conversations centred only around mundane matters. The conflict gave me the idea of writing this story,” says Chakravorty. A storyteller at heart, the debutant filmmaker has earlier published a novel and made two short films.

Books or film scripts, human relationships remain the core of his storytelling craft. The story of ‘KYP’ was no exception.

“When the script was sent to me, I found the story very intriguing and complex — a murder mystery and yet a mother-son story at the core. I was fascinated by this man’s dilemma, his depression or the complexities he experiences in his love life as well as his relationship with his mother,” says lead actor Sukant Goel, who plays the son, Uttam. The film is also Goel’s first full-length feature as the male lead. He is known for his character roles in ‘Monica O My Darling’ and ‘Ghost Stories’.

For Sadhana Singh, remembered for her role in the ’80s classic ‘Nadiya Ke Paar’, who plays the mother, it was an instant “yes” as well. “An actor is always hungry for a meaty role, and when you get that, you have no other option but to say yes,” says Singh, an unusual choice for the lead actress.

Rajit Kapur, back as Bengali detective Bondo 28 years after immortalising Byomkesh Bakshi on television, says it was the fresh approach to his character that sealed the deal for him. “Byomkesh was a common man. Bondo is more of a bureaucratic detective who behaves like a sarkari babu. I agreed to the role so as to break my earlier detective mould.”

Like any first-time independent filmmaker, funds were a major challenge, and AB, as Chakravorty is known, tried all possible measures — some usual, some not so — from participating in a screenwriting contest with big prize money to crowd-funding.

Eventually, they (Chakravorty, his wife Nishu Dikshit and other friends), decided to produce the film themselves. “We pooled in our resources. Many people in the production team, even our actors, lent their skills purely because they believed in our film. But we still needed more money to complete the production, so we launched a crowd-funding campaign,” says Dikshit, producer of ‘KYP’. “From Rs 1K to Rs 5 lakh, people, mostly friends from school, college corporate life, some of whom connected to us after years, gave freely without conditions. We collected Rs 40 lakh in 40 days,” adds Dikshit, who also has a role in the movie.

The film had its world premiere at the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) in June this year, and a successful run at other international festivals, including the Washington DC South Asian Film Festival, Indian Film Festival of Melbourne and Indian Film Festival of Toronto. The crowd-funded film almost did not make it to any festival due to the fund crunch again.

But Aseem Chhabra, festival director, NYIFF, waived off all charges. “We rarely get good thrillers from the Hindi film industry. ‘KYP’ is very well made and well directed. This is the director’s first film, but he managed to get the mood, the setting, the suspense, and the quirkiness of characters, especially the mother’s character, right. It has a very Agatha Christie-like quality to it and the twist at the end is quite surprising. It was well received by the audience,” adds Chhabra. The film was nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Debut Film at NYIFF.

The digital marketing campaign of ‘KYP’, designed by influencer Pulkit Kochar, is also quite unique, helping the film’s Instagram reels gain nearly 1 million views. The debutant director is hopeful it will translate into footfall in the theatres.