Short Film ‘Misfits’ Is a Portrait of Four ‘Others’ in the Density of Mumbai

In 2020, following the BLM protests, a number of notable figures including many from the Indian film industry publicly denounced racism in America, offering solidarity to Black Americans, while staying silent about the prejudice happening in their own communities. This seemed even more farcical, given that many of the same individuals actively contributed to prejudicial attitudes by endorsing skin lightening products or perpetuating all kinds of normative privilege and benefiting from it.

With Misfits - directed by The Corner Shop's Varun Chopra - the goal was to create a piece that centers the distinct lived experiences of individuals (who work in the same industry) that have faced prejudice in their lives full of it's own eccentricities, feelings of deprivation and traumas and in the process explore ways in which they coped with it all. We employed music, typography and different forms of cameras to mimic the momentum of their recollections, as we filmed them walking through nooks and crannies of a city they had grown to assert themselves in.

Through Misfits, the effort is to start a conversation about the realities of colourism, homophobia, racism and prejudice, something that many in the South Asian subcontinent face everyday. The hope is for an active change in societal viewpoints in Indian society, that often leans on concealing its own ills.