Filmmaker Tanmaya Shekhar: An Emerging Voice

Tanmaya Shekhar is a filmmaker based in Mumbai. He graduated from IIT Kanpur with an undergraduate degree in Economics, and lived in New York for many years, where he worked on HBO shows (The Plot Against America, Love Life) in the production department. 

His short film Scenes From A Pandemic (2023), traces the life of a young woman from Jaipur who goes to Mumbai for her career. Suddenly, the pandemic strikes and is unlike millions of Indians who adapt or find ways to cope, however; her life takes a nosedive. Isolated in a city far from home, she fights the weight of uncertainty, loneliness, and overturning changes that come amidst the global crisis.

In this interview, Shekhar talks about the idea behind the film, the shooting process and his future plans.

 Through the story of a young woman, Molshri, you have narrated how the pandemic was pivotal in shaping our professional and personal lives. Why did you feel this story needed to be told?

Since 2012 I had been living in New York City and had planned to settle there. But when the pandemic came, it turned my life upside down. My mausa and nana passed away. My father spent many months in the ICU, fighting for his life. It was a period of immense emotional turmoil and grief.  It brought me much closer to my family and I decided to move back to India. It was my personal ‘Swades’ moment. So I wanted to make a film that would honour this period in my life. And I was sure that I was not the only one. It’s a story that will resonate with many millions whose life were reshaped by the pandemic. 

From uploading activities of her daily life to asking for help from people to save her father, social media plays a critical role in Moolshri's life. Did you intend to comment that these platforms can both empower individuals and highlight their vulnerabilities in times of crisis?

I didn’t deliberately set out to highlight the role of social media. I just wanted to be as authentic about the pandemic as possible… And during the pandemic we were connected on social media nonstop. Whether it was sourcing help during the 2nd Wave in 2021, or just communicating with work, making new online friends, dating, or self-expression, our use of social media skyrocketed. But no, there was no deliberate thought. It’s just such a big part of our lives now, that I guess, it just showed up.

How did you and Molshri shoot the film? Share the process.

Even though I’m very analytical, I’m often guided by instinct. Late 2021, I had seen Molshri perform at a play at Prithvi Theater, and I knew that I wanted to work with her. So I wrote the story specifically keeping her in mind.  And once she came onboard, things felt very instinctual. We kept going back & forth about shooting on a camera vs shooting on a phone. Eventually we decided to shoot on an Iphone, to keep things even more authentic. Since so much of our lives were online (and especially on our phones), why not shoot on that? Especially since we wanted to keep the film as natural and as documentary-esque as possible. 

A lot of scenes were a challenge for the actors. All the scenes that take place on WhatsApp, had to be shot by the actors themselves on the front camera of the Iphone, so that it feels authentic. And on the phone, where they had to look, instead of seeing the other actor, they would see themselves. 

So they are basically seeing themselves in real-time while they are performing. This was a big challenge, since no amount of theatre work or film work trains actors to perform this way. 

But Molshri, and all the other actors - Bhavya, Aarti, Arif, and Vijendra did a fabulous job, despite these hiccups. 

Since we were not working like a regular film crew, shooting locations were not a challenge. We shot in friends’s apartments, in grocery stores, office buildings, even in a hospital… but no one bothered us since we were shooting on a phone. It’s so normal for people to shoot phone videos anywhere. We only had to figure out how to hide our sound recordist, Atul.

Did the editing help you to shape the structure of the film?

The edit was where we really discovered the film’s tempo. I had written the script in a video diary format with all the months as you see in the final film, but the edits were not really working. The rhythm and pacing of flowing from one month to another was missing. 

Finally, two months into the edit, we got another editor, Radhika, and she really made the film fly. Her choice of music and how long to stay on every month, found the film’s groove. And once we figured out the pacing, we rewrote the script, and shot new scenes, that would match the emotional intensity of the month that we were in. 

Basically, structurally, it was a hard film to pull off, and full credit to Radhika for pulling it off.

Tell us about the casting. 

The film was made in a small intimate scale. The casting was also done similarly. Very organic. Once Molshri came onboard, she essentially became the casting director. She put me in touch with her peers like Bhavya (Shruti) and Vijendra (Boss), whose profiles I really liked. I had seen Aarti (mom) in the play with Molshri, so she was a no-brainer. It took us some time to find Arif (the dad), but he fit the part perfectly. When we called him for a rehearsal, we knew he was the one. 

The title of the film appears at the end, and the word pandemic is translated into various languages. What was the reason to do so?

The pandemic was one of those rare phenomena, where people from disparate regions, all had similar experiences. This long-term experience of isolation, grief, confusion, chaos and adjusting to a new way of life… So while the film is about one young woman in Mumbai, it tells the story of our collective experience as humanity. So the title credit sequence was the one place where I could actually literally nod to all these people from different regions in a simple way. 

What are you currently working on? 

There is a lot going on. Just this week, I’ll be wrapping my debut feature, Nukkad Naatak, which we made independently also. Molshri is also the lead in it, and also my co-producer. 

We will now begin looking for distributors and platform to release this film as well. I’ll be traveling to Seattle in October since Nukkad Naatak got selected into a prestigious film marketplace, the Tasveer Film Market. 

You can watch the film here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2o70cZItqo