Religion is the opium of the masses, said Karl Marx once. Mumbai-based Aman Sachdeva’s feature, Opium, is also about religion. He adds, “faith", during a telephone conversation with me. His movie will be part of the Tokyo International Film Festival, which begins on Diwali night, October 24.
An ad film maker by profession (his bread and butter, so to say), he said that his urge to make a feature, something meaningful, was so strong that he finally got into creating Opium. His docu-drama, Polio vs Polio Victims, which he made over a decade ago was, in all probability, a stepping stone for his feature, which will play in one of the most significant sections of the Festival focussing on Asian cinema.
A great fan of directors like Roy Anderson, the Coen Brothers, Vikramaditya Motwane and Vishal Bharadwaj (My favourite is his Omkara". Based on Shakespeare’s Othello, Bharadwaj transports the story to the badlands of Uttar Pradesh with Saif Ali Khan giving us a brilliant performance), Sachdeva’s cinema journey appears to have begun in all its earnestness, and what better place than Japan, where life and living are glitteringly cinematic.
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Opium is an anthology of five shorts. “Our shoot struggled because of the Coronavirus Pandemic. It was difficult to find finance, and even more difficult to get the movie moving," Sachdeva rued.
Opium is an hour and seventeen minutes long, and the common thread running through the stories is “religion and faith" — issues that are paramount in India today, nay the world over. There are five parts or stories. However, despite being strung together by faith and religion, the stories are set in different worlds, different parts of India with completely different characters.
One of them is a science-fiction Utopian story set in the near future. There is one on riots in Delhi, a couple of years ago. “I have not named any community, or cast aspersions," the director averred. “The viewers can draw their own conclusions." It is titled Danga.
The segment called Pulao talks about women who deliver food (Swiggy, Zomato, etc), with Deepika Vidya headlining it. Apart from these, we have Blind and The Petal, which is about two best friends, six-year-old boys and is set in Nainital.
Apart from Nainital, Sachdeva has chosen places like Mumbai and Vasai (on the outskirts of India’s financial capital). “There is a small Catholic community in Vasai, and I have used them for my story," Sachdeva added.
The anthology seems like an exciting cocktail of science fiction, emotional drama, comedy and rage.
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