Jaydeep Sarkar doesn’t want to make popcorn films

“There is a tectonic shift in the way cinema is going to be viewed in future,” says Jaydeep Sarkar, who is basking in the accolades coming for the 22-minute segment Ishq Mastana, which is part of the Netflix anthology Feels Like Ishq.

Telling a story in that short a time comes easy to Jaydeep, who, for a large part of his career, made ad films not longer than 30 seconds. “What matters is the story I tell in that time. I want people to look back at my films and think that ‘Oh! This is what love looked like in 2021’. I don’t want to make simplistic films in a bubble with privileged people who are not concerned about the world around them,” states Jaydeep Sarkar.

His work is influenced by the directors he has worked with like Sudhir Mishra and Anurag Kashyap. His tendency to portray realism reflects in the stories he has written like Khoya Khoya Chand and Daas Dev for Sudhir Mishra, Shaurya and the popular youth TV show Remix.

His segment, Ishq Mastana, starring A Suitable Boy fame Tanya Mansukhani and Skand Thakur, is about two people who meet at a protest site for a date. “It’s an unusual setting when meeting someone for the first time. I grew up in the ’90s which was a very comfortable generation… telephones and cable TV had just come in. I often wondered if our generation was capable of a revolution. Then when these movements like BLM happened that got the world talking, you see this generation standing up and taking charge of their lives. That was really inspiring… this fire to get things done.”

The director shares that the point of his film was also two people coming together with very different points of views. “The boy is apolitical and the girl believes in a bigger cause,” adds Jaydeep.

Interspersed with nuggets of Kabir’s poetry in a song in the segment, Jaydeep says he feels happy that youngsters are discussing Kabir’s poetry online. “I think if I can reintroduce Kabir to five people, then I consider myself successful and my job done,” says Jaydeep.

Talking about how OTT platforms have changed the game, he reflects, “OTT platforms are bringing the times of the ’70s and the ’80s when filmmakers could tell stories they were close to and not those they knew would appeal to the audience. OTT platforms are giving space to stories that have a voice of their own,” signs off Jaydeep.

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