Short Stream | ‘GAIA’ by Abhay Kapoor

Short Stream | ‘GAIA’ by Abhay Kapoor

How can political gamesmanship — the dog-eat-dog kind that is routine in coalition politics — be a mirror to romantic love? Both are seemingly antithetical to each other. In GAIA, a film written, directed and co-produced by 34-year-old, Delhi-based writer and director Abhay Kapoor, politics and love are in a parasitic coil, revealing not just fantasies of heterosexual men for political power and female subjugation and attention, but how technology irreversibly alters these fantasies.

PREMIUM A still from ‘GAIA’.

With a running time of 45 minutes, Kapoor’s taut screenplay, unfolds at the home of a seasoned, ageing politician Vivek Shukla (Atul Tiwari) who heads the ruling government. On a stormy night, Arindam Sehgal (Lakshya Goel), leader of the Labour Party, visits Shukla to negotiate ministries and alliances. Arindam seems to be key in keeping the coalition afloat, but tensions escalate as Arindam’s arch nemesis Maitreyi Sodhi (Preeti Sharma) unexpectedly arrives. As the night progresses, Vivek and Maitreyi start poaching MPs from Arindam’s party, and blackmails Arindam into showing his support for an Artificial Intelligence Bill and save his party from falling apart. The twist in the narrative arrives when Arindam begins talking to Jenna (Komal Munshi), the young lover of Vivek.

Power games spiral intro threats, which then devolves into an existential crisis about the nature of love, commitment, love on demand or subjugated love, and the nature of human existence itself.

Kapoor has earlier written and directed An Act of Violence (2019), a short film about a man who reincarnates in different time periods of human history, every time involved in a violent act. It was an experimental film — in form and theme. The narrative of GAIA is more linear. Shot in an unused home of his aunt, GAIA is inspired in form by David Fincher’s 12 Angry Men. “I’ve always been interested in sci-fi fiction that it not action-oriented. Blade Runner and Ex Machina kind of storytelling is an influence in my writing,” says Kapoor, who is now at work on a script titled Ek Mard Ka Janam, themed around a modern-day masculinity crisis. “An empathetic, edgy thriller,” explains Kapoor.

In GAIA too, the dark side of male fantasies is a propeller to the story. Kapoor says moral questions such as the ebbing away of how humanity perceives and experiences death and separation were on his mind while writing the screenplay. “I wanted it to be intriguing, and very cinema-like,” Kapoor says, emphasizing his belief in a more mainstream and commercial way of storytelling to reach audiences. “I find the communal aspect of film screenings, with people sharing the experience in a dark room, deeply moving,” the writer-director says. With an educational background at the Indian Institute of Mass Communications, Delhi, in radio and television production, Kapoor has worked as a copy writer in advertising and producing and directing social impact films for NGOs before beginning to write fiction.

The film has had several screenings so far in India including at Alliance Francaise, Delhi, and at the Aravali International Film Festival this year.

The visual language in GAIA, shaped by a very classic-cinematic language by cinematographer Debesh Mehrotra. “GAIA belongs to the universe of David Fincher, Alfred Hitchcock, Dennis Villeneuve and Michael Mann films,” says Kapoor.

The film has enough intrigue and cinematic style to keep audiences engaged — and leave its last frame with a sense of resignation to and fascination about a world we don’t yet understand.

(Short Stream is a monthly curated section, in which we present an Indian short film that hasn’t been seen before or not widely seen before but are making the right buzz in the film industry and film festival circles. We stream the film for a month on HT Premium, the subscription-only section in hindustantimes.com. Sanjukta Sharma is a Mumbai-based writer and film critic. Write to her at sanjukta.sharma@gmail.com.)

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