Before making his first feature film, Stolen (2023), director Karan Tejpal worked as assistant director on Delhi-6 (2009) and was part of the directorial team on three Rajkumar Hirani projects: Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006), 3 Idiots (2009) and Ferrari ki Sawaari (2012).

PREMIUM

In the movie, the Bansal brothers, Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee) and Raman (Shubham), get entangled in a missing-infant case after an impoverished woman named Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer) accuses Raman of stealing her baby. Raman is quickly cleared of suspicion, but when he sees how lazily the police are investigating, he decides to help Jhumpa, much to Gautam’s annoyance.

Gautam, with his cynical conviction that money can solve everything, offers one view of the privileged Indian. Raman, with his empathy and courage, offers another. Between them is Jhumpa, whose poverty leaves her teetering between being invisible and being demonised.

Stolen moves at breakneck pace, with twists in its tale and tense chases through the Rajasthan countryside. Woven into the thriller is a layered portrait of privilege, class divides and mob mentality.

The film is not interested in occupying a moral high ground. Instead, it focuses on subtlety and complexity. The village whose men form a murderous mob is also home to kind-hearted boys (or are they just a few years away from being sucked into a hivemind of violence?). The ambulance driver who saves lives also trades in them. Raman’s empathy for a heartbroken stranger runs parallel to his disregard for his own mother.

Despite being selected for the Venice Film Festival in 2023, Stolen has had no theatrical release, and has only just found space on a streaming platform. That it has taken this long is worrying, especially since the movie was championed by influential filmmakers such as Anurag Kashyap, Nikkhil Advani and Kiran Rao.

Discussions about the health of the movie industry invariably turn to earnings, but a vibrant entertainment business is more than the sum of its blockbusters. Small projects such as Stolen are an integral aspect of building a stable industry. They offer the audience much-needed variety and showcase talent that doesn’t fit the cookie-cutter moulds of commercial cinema.

Take Maelzer, who delivers an extraordinary performance as Jhumpa. “I generally don’t get a lot of commercial auditions because of the way I look,” she has said. An alumnus of the National School of Drama, she has worked as an acting coach and a Pilates instructor, to afford the luxury of doing only projects that excite her; projects like Majid Majidi’s Beyond the Clouds (2017), and Stolen.

Medium- and low-budget films allow creatives the freedom to experiment with and explore their craft too. Some go on to win awards and critical acclaim. But even without such shiny validation, small films enrich the industry because they alleviate the sense of sameness that otherwise pervades theatrical offerings. What will it take to admit this, and act on it?

In a recent interview, actor Seema Pahwa, who made her directorial debut with the small-budget satire Ramprasad ki Tehrvi (2019), said raising money for another film felt impossible because producers were not interested in more of the unconventional. “If you make good low-budget films, at least two out of five will work. But they (producers) only want the same old formula that people are rejecting.”

As pronouncements go, that’s more depressing than the plots of most non-mainstream movies. After all, as dark as Stolen might be, at least in a way it holds out hope.

(To reach Deepanjana Pal with feedback, write to @dpanjana on Instagram)

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