Acclaimed actress Manisha Koirala (“Bombay,” “1942: A Love Story,” “Khamoshi”) and director Vikramaditya Motwane (“Udaan,” “Trapped”) discussed the evolving landscape between theatrical and streaming platforms during a session at the International Film Congress. Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, where Koirala also revealed plans to write a comedy book about 90s and 2000s actresses adapting to Gen Z culture.
“For me as an actor, whether it is on the big screen or a web series, it takes the same amount of work, and dedication is required,” said Koirala, who recently starred in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s hit Netflix series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar. “The preparation, the frame of mind, everything is the same.”
Motwane, who directed Prime Video’s “Jubilee” and Netflix’s “Sacred Games,” noted that streaming offers more creative flexibility. “The great part about streaming is that you’re not bound to say with theatrical release, ‘Okay, you’ve got to make a two- to two-and-a-half-hour movie.’ You have a story, you have a hook — this could be a movie, this could be 10 hour-long episodes over the course of “Five seasons, and this could be 20 minutes.”
The director, whose debut feature film ‘Udaan’ premiered at Cannes, revealed that ‘Sacred Games’, an adaptation of Vikram Chandra’s best-selling novel, was a learning experience in the form of a series. “Netflix said okay, here’s the book. We took the book and broke the book. It took six months longer than it should have, but we figured it out. Understanding how this format works, what suspense is, and why you need a suspense at the end if you want people to move on to Next episode.
They both agreed that streaming has opened up more opportunities for diverse storytelling and roles for veteran actresses. “Thanks to OTT platforms, as well as the audience as well, even in cinema, older actresses are playing huge roles,” Koirala noted. “The space is available to them because the audience’s mind and heart have expanded.”
The director revealed that working in live streaming has made him more proficient in making feature films. “The lessons I learned from Sacred Games and Jubilee helped me improve features, because I can shoot faster now. We were pulling five pages a day. All 10 episodes of Jubilee, hour-long episodes, were shot in 90 days, including 10 lip-sync songs.
Motwani noted that India is still adapting to the viewing format common in international series. “We still haven’t gotten used to the show format in this country. We need to absorb this, we need to build a little bit more, that way you’ll get more new directors coming in.”
The rise of private viewing on mobile devices has also impacted content consumption patterns in India, according to Motwane. “India is the country that first adopted the Internet through its phones, not through broadband. The first device most people choose is their phone, which makes viewing private.
The session was moderated by festival director Shekhar Kapoor.