Six love tales with one widespread theme—inclusivity. It was a no brainer for debutant director Collin D’Cunha to inform a queer love story within the romantic anthology, Love Storiyaan, produced by Karan Johar’s Dharmatic Leisure. The Amazon Prime Video collection was curated by India Love Venture—based by former journalists Priya Ramani, Samar Halarnkar, and Niloufer Venkatraman. D’Cunha says that it was how his protagonists, trans couple Tista Das and Dipan Chakraborty, first learnt to fall in love with themselves earlier than discovering one another, that drew him.
D’Cunha says it was an vital story to inform. “Our present creator, Somen Mishra, wished the collection to be inclusive. The very first thing that struck me of their marriage ceremony video was how each Tista and Dipan had been flashing the victory signal. It felt like a end result of the whole lot that they went by way of in life simply to have the ability to get married,” says the director, who highlighted their journey from their particular person childhood struggles with physique dysphoria to eventual self-acceptance. “What spoke to me about their extraordinary story was that they needed to discover themselves and fall in love with themselves first. To seek out somebody who loves them for who they’re was a distant dream for them,” he says.
Collin D’Cunha
Realizing that ignorance and discrimination towards the transgender group nonetheless exist, D’Cunha wished to take the viewers contained in the thoughts of a transgender individual to make them perceive what compels somebody to discard the id they’re born with. “The viewers won’t ever perceive the psyche of a trans particular person. [That is why] I made a decision to talk about their childhood as a result of a variety of trauma is about at the moment,” stated the director, who showcased imagined visuals of the couple’s childhood as they weren’t snug sharing their previous images.
Love Past Labels is the one brief the place the couple’s courtship hasn’t been proven, besides when the protagonists discuss it. He explains that Das and Chakraborty had been transitioning throughout their courtship, and therefore he used trans actors to symbolize their story. “As soon as the love story involves the fore, the couple comes into the centre, however earlier than that, I wished the viewers to know what it’s to transition after which discover love,” he says.