Wanted to explore how people are brainwashed by political leaders in Peyada, says Soumya Roy Choudhury

Soumya Roy Choudhury made his short film Peyada (Pawn) last year during the pandemic-induced lockdown.

The film, which explores how political parties brainwash the masses, has been appreciated at various international festivals and also emerged as a winner at the Mumbai International Cult Film Festival 2020.

In this film, which he wrote, directed and acted in himself, Roy Choudhury has shown how leaders ensnare the unemployed, fill their heads with a certain ideology and divert their attention from real issues.

Roy Choudhury made the film weeks after the government declared a nation lockdown in the last week of March with just four hours' notice, leaving lakhs of migrant labourers stranded in cities without work, money or food, forcing many of them to make the long journey home by whatever means available, including by foot.

The director said, “I made the film in May 2020 during the lockdown. There were extremely disturbing news reports all over television and social media. Migrant workers were being treated like stray animals and were walking hundreds of kilometres to reach their homes, even dying in the process, while the media was busy bashing a certain religious community for allegedly spreading the coronavirus.”

In Peyada, Naren (Roy Choudhury) and Amit (Judhajit Sarkar) are two such indoctrinated characters who, despite their own dicey economic situation, derive pleasure through the politics of hate. “Instances of vote-bank politics are everywhere now. Even in a state of emergency, politicians are pushing people to fight in the name of religion. They are turned into pawns through misinformation in social media propaganda and WhatsApp forwards,” the filmmaker said.

While trying to depict reality through his works, Choudhury adopts different perspectives. “I wanted to present this story through the perspective of the brainwashed. While making the film I wanted to look into their behaviour and explore how they can invest in issues like ‘love jihad’ and purification of religion when they are not even sure about their own future. They are so easily tricked into living in a bubble of propaganda that they get an outlet to exercise their deep-rooted hatred openly and begin to consider whatever the politicians endorse as the truth,” he said.

Naren and Amit consider teaching a 'lesson’ to Hindu-Muslim couples at a time when thousands of people are dying either due to COVID-19 or unemployment. However, while Amit seems to be entirely bereft of critical thinking skills, Naren is sometimes pricked by his conscience. In this context, Choudhury has adopted an interesting cinematic technique to highlight the moments when Naren stands apart from the herd.

“Initially, I thought of portraying Naren as a faceless character, making the whole film in POV mode, and letting the audience be in the position of manipulated people,” said Choudhury. In the film, Naren’s face is only visible when he is vulnerable and clueless. "It is important for the audience to see his battle with his conscience,” said Choudhury.

Choudhury went through great difficulties in making a film with a layered narrative without a crew. Though he believes filmmaking is a team effort, working completely independently allowed the director to exercise great liberty. “When I didn’t like a day's work, I could re-do it the next day or shoot it again. I could improvise my script at the last moment and also, working as an actor in my own work — as I had no other choice — helped me mould the character on the spot,” stated the director who admitted to facing the most difficulties while operating the camera.

“I don't possess a tripod, so I had to use chairs, tools, bookshelves, a washbasin and everything else as a tripod. I only have two lenses, the basic 18-55 mm and the 50 mm, which is one of my favourites, so I had to keep the subject and angle in such a way that it generated the best result from these two particular lenses. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention," he said.

Choudhury prefers to recreate ambient sounds on his own and uses them to support the narrative. “When I completed the Foley for the film, I realized I did not need to put any extra music as it creates its own music with the ambience and visuals,” he said.

“I showed it to some senior filmmakers and they loved it without the background music so I decided to go ahead with that. In this film, I have created a sub-layer deliberately through the sound of the film. The azaan, temple bell, TV and silence contribute to the surrounding of this character and his mindset. The sound of the goat bleating when he is talking about the Muslim boy creates an added tensed sublayer, depicting the mindset of the character to whom many of us relate.

“The war cry at the end represents the beginning of another chapter of the same hatred and manipulation. Also, the film constantly uses alcohol to represent today's society where we all are like addicts. We all are drunk, sometimes with power, sometimes with hatred or sometimes with fake news and slowly we are getting used to it.

Choudhury made it clear that he did not have second thoughts while directly addressing thorny issues. “I was dead clear that I would talk about this issue. I don't like calling out any particular party by its name because I have a lot of angst. However, one trait all political parties share is to use the common man as their pawns. It becomes very easy to distract our youth with sensitive issues to secure a particular vote bank, especially when they are constantly losing work and sitting idle. Actually, it is the anger and dissatisfaction we have in our own lives that find an outlet in the wrong paths shown by our leaders,” he said.

Peyada is being streamed on Disney+ Hotstar.