What’s Your Story? review: Examining the ecosystem of indie cinema

OP Srivastava’s documentary What’s Your Story? ends with a quote by Sidney Lumet which encapsulates the myriad emotions that independent filmmakers experience while creating their films. In a country where no organized ecosystem exists to support independent cinema, the film explores what compels filmmakers to strive against all odds to tell their stories.

Shot during the lockdown, the film features a host of independent filmmakers interviewed on video calls, who speak about their journeys and travails as well as their reasons for making films despite all the challenges that they face. The video calls are interspersed with footage from the films and shoots to give a sense of the kind of films that the filmmakers have made.

We get a glimpse of what cinema means for indie filmmakers. Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, for example, talks about film as an “audio-visual experience” and describes how his Ozhivudivasathe Kali (2015) was shot without a script. Devashish Makhija talks about cinema being a form of activism for him. But all agree that they are compelled to tell their stories and driven to do so by their passion.

An art form that is usually seen as being in opposition to mainstream commercial films, independent cinema has its own aesthetics, form and even audience. As filmmaker Amartya Bhattacharyya says, it is the "difference between creating and manufacturing".

From attempting to define the term ‘indie cinema’ to throwing light on the process of shooting the films, raising funds, finding a market and highlighting the exhibition platforms available for independent cinema, What’s Your Story? attempts to provide a 360° view of independent filmmaking.

An eye-opening film, What’s Your Story? takes us into an almost parallel universe of independent filmmaking in a bid to understand all aspects of making an indie film. The latter part of the documentary focuses on modes of exhibition, examining the newer OTT platforms that cater specifically towards indie content, like Cinemapreneur and MovieSaints.

What's Your Story? is being screened at the 21st New York Indian Film Festival, which is being held virtually from 4–13 June.