GOING WHERE NO ONE HAS

Filmmaker Navdeep Singh looks for stories and locations that are yet to be explored

EEven after 12 years in Mumbai’s show business, writer-director Navdeep Singh sees himself as a bit of an “outlier”. “It reflects in my stories,” says Singh, who has made three films, including the noir Manorama Six Feet Under (2007) and the thriller NH10 (2015). The third is Laal Kaptaan, featuring Saif Ali Khan as a Naga sadhu and a hunter on the lookout for a man for two decades. Even though both are rebels and highly driven, don’t look for any parallels between Singh and Laal Kaptaan. “I am not a lone wolf,” he says.

Singh came to Mumbai in 2001 after spending almost a decade abroad, first studying filmmaking at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena and then working on ad films in Los Angeles and London. “It seemed like an exciting time to be making films in India,” he says, citing Satya and Hyderabad Blues (1998), and then Dil Chahta Hai and Lagaan (2001) as films that deviated from staid formulas. “Things looked really bright.”

Singh, who started by directing ad films for Film Farm and Red Ice, soon realised that though the Hindi film industry was opening up, it was still not inclusive when it came to ad filmmakers. “Bollywood was a bit sceptical about commercial directors at the time,” he says. “Aap ad waalon ko kahaani batani nahin aati [You ad guys don’t know how to tell a story].” He proved them wrong with Manorama..., which went on to win critical acclaim.

Singh has had to conform to industry tropes and “self-censor” a bit over the years, but has managed to tell stories in his ingenious way. The success of NH10 made Laal Kaptaan—which is “conceptually more out there”—easier. A western set in the late 1700s after the Battle of Buxar, the film is shot in some unexplored territories of Rajasthan. “I have this location fetish and an impulse to go where you have never been,” he says. “Landscapes are evocative. They speak to you, and you think, ‘There must be a story here.’” With Singh, you’re thankfully assured that the story will neither be run-of-the-mill nor formulaic. ■

ACCORDING TO NAVDEEP SINGH, LAAL KAPTAAN IS ‘CONCEPTUALLY MORE OUT THERE’