Piracy has morphed into one thing much more harmful than bootleg DVDs. In his newest collection First Copy that’s set within the Nineties, director Farhan Zamma dives into this shadowy world as he tells the story of Arif, an unemployed teen who’s lured by the fast cash of movie piracy. “Rising up within the Nineties, I noticed how DVD piracy grew to become an reasonably priced, accessible type of leisure that households consumed collectively. What struck me later was that whereas the business has explored main scams of Harshad Mehta, Nirav Modi, and [Abdul Karim] Telgi, we’ve by no means informed the story of piracy. It impacted the expansion of Indian cinema, but it was by no means addressed on display,” says the director.
Zamma has informed tales throughout codecs, from net collection Taj: Divided By Blood and Fortunately Ever After (2020) to documentaries, together with Heritage Trails One District One Product (2021). These previous experiences helped him form the Amazon MX Participant collection. The director shares that whereas his love for research-driven storytelling fuelled First Copy’s script, the protagonist got here to life solely when he noticed Munawar Faruqui. “The story lacked a central character. That modified after I watched Munawar’s Dongri Ka Rider. The second I noticed it, I knew we had discovered our Arif. There have been questions on whether or not he may act, however we have been assured in our alternative.”
His analysis of 13 months took him by way of the wildest true tales. “The tales revealed the size of the problem. This wasn’t simply petty theft; it was an
organised system,” asserts the director.
Piracy continues to plague Indian cinema even at this time. Final month, information emerged that as per an audit commissioned by Sikandar’s makers, the Salman Khan-starrer had suffered losses of about R91 crore attributable to piracy. Point out this to Zamma, and he says, “We’re making a present about piracy in an age the place content material is pirated earlier than the credit roll. First Copy doesn’t glorify piracy. We’re holding up the mirror to a system that is still damaged; the instruments could have modified, however the issue hasn’t.”
Farhan Zamma
True tales
As a part of his analysis on movie piracy, Farhan Zamma learnt about real-life experiences of many filmmakers. He recounts, “Sanjay Gupta recalled being compelled by the underworld to promote his movie’s worldwide rights at double the standard value in order that these prints could possibly be pirated overseas and smuggled again into India simply earlier than the discharge. Madhur Bhandarkar shared how some producers, overwhelmed by mounting losses, ended up promoting their very own reels to pirates merely to get better [a part of] the price.”