Peddlers

A multi-strand tale about a violent narcotics cop, the drug dealers he hunts, and their struggles for survival in the Mumbai night.

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office at each venue.


Image gallery

  • Director-Screenwriter Vasan Bala
  • Producer Anurag Kashyap, Guneet Monga
  • With Gulshan Devaiah, Siddharth Mennon
  • India 2012
  • 116 mins
  • Sales Elle Driver

Fresh from Cannes success, this compelling multi-strand film noir tells of ace narcotics investigation cop Ranjit. His successful work life is, however, in deep contrast to his private struggle with impotence, which makes relationships with women impossible. On the other side of the fence is Bilkis, a young Bangladeshi woman who has become a drug mule in order to pay for her cancer operation. While the cop’s frustrated private life starts to get dangerously confused with his investigations, Bilkis and her dealer friends embark on their biggest score yet. Unstable Ranjit is on the scent of Bilkis’s drug-carrier boyfriend, and it’s not long before Ranjit and Bilkis’ paths cross, and she is forced to trade loyalties for her very survival. First-time director Vasan Bala’s flair for unexpected plot twists ensures a rollercoaster-ride of a narrative, while a powerful cast bring to life its dark heart.
Cary Sawhney

Director Q&A

So what’s the movie about?

We wanted to treat Mumbai like a ghost town. Usually when someone comes here, the first images are of the Gateway of India and Mohammed Ali Road – we wanted to negate all that. Most of us are locked into our own spaces and don’t even see the crowd. Our characters are similar, they don’t see the crowd, so we’ve eliminated all that. We’re following three characters – one drifter, one lady on a mission, and another who is living a lie, struggling with his identity – and what happens if these three collide? Some collisions have consequences.

How did you manage to shoot a ghost-town Mumbai?

We had a primary character in frame, and everything else we treated with sound. You can’t 100 per cent avoid people in Bombay, so in most spaces we wanted just the primary character and to show the presence of people only through the presence of sound. It’s like sitting in a room alone and you only hear footsteps which scare you.

You raised money for this film via Facebook. Tell us how you did it.

It wasn’t a serious plan that we thought would work. Guneet put a message on Facebook because we weren’t finding anyone to support it. We got a couple of messages back. She sat down with a lawyer and created a structure whereby people could crowdsource it. Now we have seven co-producers and three associate producers.

You’ve worked with both Anurag Kashyap and Michael Winterbottom. What’s something you learned from both of them?

Both are very organic, not control freaks in a way, and extremely control freaky in other ways. I really learned from Michael more than Anurag, who is pretty much a rock star in the Indian context, and that can be a little distracting and overwhelming at times. Michael doesn’t have that aura and he can be pretty detached and relentless, which I like a little more. I was grateful to work with him. It’s a relentless, objective way to filmmaking, and a state of mind that you carry through from shooting to editing the film.

Is that something you brought to your own direction?

Yeah, completely, there really wasn’t any support as far as the budget was concerned. Every day was what do we have today and accordingly we’d change scenes according to what was available. If you got too emotional or attached, then any change will bother you, especially when you don’t have a budget for it. So that slight detachment helped in having objectivity towards the film.
Vasan Bala

Director biography

A former assistant director to Anurag Kashyap on Dev D and Gulaal, and an associate director to Michael Winterbottom on Trishna, he was born and brought up in the Mumbai suburb of Matunga, and initially studied commerce and then law, jumping into IT within the banking sector before, at 28, deciding to migrate to the movie industry. His film baptism over, he saw his micro-budget feature Peddlers premiered in the Critics’ Week selection at Cannes this year.

Filmography

2012 Peddlers