Love at 5th Floor — previously known as Happily Ever After — a five-part mini-series written, directed and produced by Aditi Banerjee, is being streamed on MX Player.
The multilingual series, in Hindi, English, Kannada and Punjabi, was crowdfunded by over 100 people and marks Banerjee’s directorial debut.
Nalasha Apartments is like any other ordinary apartment in urban India, but with the extraordinary stories of three very different women.
One evening, the successful CEO of a company, Anya Roy discovers a video of her husband having sex with another woman. In the neighbouring house, young and feisty Ikjot struggles to be a responsible mother and encounters her sensual self again through the world of online chatrooms. Opposite Ikjot lives an older woman, who is unmarried and polyamorous. Uma is a professor from a conservative Kannadiga family with not-so-conservative choices. The show explores the world of love, desire, friendship and separation through the three central characters.
Starring Dilnaz Irani, Rachna Gupta, Virginia Rodrigues, Vivek Kumar, Vaibhav Deep Chopra and Kafeel Jafri, the series was selected at the Montreal International Film Festival 2020, Toronto Film Channel-2020, Lift Off Global Network- Paris- 2020. It won two awards, Exceptional Merit at Depth of Field International Film Festival and Award of Excellence at WRPN Women's International Film Festival.
Aditi Banerjee shared her joy about the launch of the web-series, saying, “The women in this series are relatable, strong, vulnerable and fallible. They break stereotypes associated with 'modern' Indian women and conventional ideas of a homemaker. Love at 5th Floor explores this world where many of us live, and nothing is simple. It is an invitation for people to take a pause, question and be able to look at life around them with a fresh perspective.”
She added, “The release is a big step for this labour of love. It is to give back to the hundred-plus people who made this happen through crowdfunding, the cast and crew who trusted me with my madness and now for the audience to make it their own”.