MPW 2022: 'Covid has made us selfish and insecure,' says 'Zwigato' director Nandita Das

Zwigato was meant to be a short film but we decided to turn it into a feature film,  Nandita Das filmmaker and actor revealed during a chat at Business Today's 'Most Powerful Women in Business' event in Mumbai on Wednesday.

“It was meant to be a short film. I was going to do a 20-minute film as part of an anthology. And then that anthology didn't work out and then producers said why don't you make it into a feature film. At that time I was scared that I'll have to study more about algorithms and ratings and it's entered something that I wouldn't understand. But that's just on the surface. Finally, it's about human relationships. Over the years, if you see the working class, it just vanished. From our popular narratives from our collective consciousness as well. We have all sorts of, gotten into kind of navel-gazing and in some sense. While a lot of people say Covid has made us more empathetic. But the flip side is Covid has also made us more selfish in a way because we are all sort of fighting for that place. Everyone's a little more insecure, a little more anxious then why you want to think about people who are not even part of those narratives,” said Das.

'Zwigato' is about a man (played by Kapil Sharma) who works as a food delivery rider, grappling with the world of ratings and incentives

While talking about women directors in the industry, Das said that they all have multiple identities, but somehow being a woman takes precedence over all others, because they are reminded so often. “Over the years, we are often saying we want more women behind the camera if you want to change the representation on screen. We want more women making decisions behind the camera. So that's hard. How can you want more women directors and not own that tag yourself? I can't say that I don't want to be a woman director, but I want lots more women directors. So I think in the 10-year journey, my relationship with that tag has changed. I'm not hesitant about it. I do not detest it. I'm a woman director and I want many more women to be telling their stories bringing in that diversity of perspectives,” said Das.

Also Read: MPW 2022: 'WPL will change the perception of women’s cricket,' says Jhulan Goswami