CTRL Director Vikramaditya Motwane Addresses Comparisons With Searching, Black Mirror

When you love something, you will chase it, says filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane explaining why he was keen to make CTRL, his new movie set in the world of internet and influencer culture.

The film gave Vikramaditya, known for acclaimed projects such as Udaan, Lootera, Trapped and Bhavesh Joshi Superhero and shows such as Sacred Games and Jubilee, a chance to explore a new format like Screenlife, where a story unfolds via different screens.

The filmmaker and co-writer Avinash Sampath started writing the story in the middle of 2020 and it still felt like they were making a futuristic story. What they didn’t realise was that it would become a “realistic story” by the time they were finished working on it.

“When you know the work is special, it drives you and it's been the same with CTRL as well because it's something we wrote during the pandemic... I was very driven that I want to make this because some ideas stay with you. And when you love something, you'll always chase it... You can tell very cool stories using the format of someone's computer screen,” Vikramaditya told PTI in an interview.

The Netflix film revolves around Nella and Joe, the perfect influencer couple. When Joe cheats on Nella, she turns to an AI app to erase him from her life — until the app takes control. Vikramaditya didn’t realise that the story would become somewhat prescient when he began working on it because the conversation around AI was still in the future.

"It felt like we were writing a sci-fi film. We didn't realise it was going to become a realistic film by the time we came around to it. The acceleration that happened in influencer culture and in AI topicality in the last year has been pretty tremendous."

Though CTRL is set in the middle of influencer culture, it is extremely relatable as screens have become a part of everyone’s life today, he said. "We are all using our devices all the time. I think the message or the story also works for all of us, in a sense, because we are all victims... We are the consumers but we are also being consumed and the film really taps into that part as well. Everybody is spending four to five to six hours a day on our phones, on our laptops so this format could be very familiar to a lot of people.”

Asked about probable comparisons with Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror, Netflix's hit sci-fi drama about how screens impact every aspect of human life, Motwane said he would take it as a compliment.

"Obviously, if this reminds you of Black Mirror, I'll take that as a compliment. I think Black Mirror is the gold standard of tech related stories of our times... I'm happy to take that as a compliment, quite honestly," said the filmmaker.

One of the earliest movies to use Screenlife format was Indian-American filmmaker Anees Chaganty who set his thriller Searching in the cyberspace. The film featured John Cho as a father trying to solve his daughter's disappearance through her social media and chat history.

"I thought Searching was a fantastic film and, in fact, we share a producer, Timur Bekmambetov. He was producer on Searching and he is one of the EPs on CTRL as well because he has been promoting Screenlife a lot.”

There were some practical challenges that came along, Vikramaditya said, describing how filmmakers have the tendency to make things look better when they are shooting a movie, which wouldn’t have worked on a story unfolding via screens.

"I kept telling my crew to make it realistic. I was like, make it look dirtier, this is looking too pretty, too nice. You can't have a film that takes place on a computer screen and make everything end up looking pretty and nicely lit and stuff. It was a challenge to be able to find the right balance."

With Kho Gaye Hum Kahan and Call Me Bae, Ananya, daughter of actor Chunky Panday, seems to have come a long way from the trolling she received in the beginning for her privileged background. Vikramaditya said he too changed his opinion about the actor when he saw her performance in Shakun Batra-directed Gehraiyaan, which featured Deepika Padukone in the lead role.

"I had the same opinion like everybody else like, a nepo kid doing movies, didn't go to college, and all that kind of stuff. I think with Gehraiyaan, I was like, hang on a second, this girl is actually good. I thought that was a really good performance," he said, praising the actor.

“Weirdly enough, CTRL is also about somebody who gets trolled a lot... I knew the potential was there so I was quite keen to cast her. I won’t say she surprised me but she lived up to every expectation that I put in front of her. She's been such a pleasure to work with and her work is showing whether it's Call Me Bae, whether it's Kho Gaye Hum Kahan or Gehraiyaan,” he said.

Vikramaditya believes the actor is now “just being the best version of herself”. “Now with CTRL, I think that she's getting better and better and more refined with every performance and is really owning herself. I think she is not being inhibited.”

There are reports about the next season of Jubilee, his hit series set in early years of Hindi cinema, but Vikramaditya would not say anything beyond “let’s see”. He is writing a “bunch of things” and hopes to figure out what he will do next. CTRL, a Saffron and Andolan production in association with Travelin Bone, premieres on Netflix on October 4.