After dabbling in long-form storytelling with the shows Sacred Games and Jubilee, ace filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane is back with another series, Black Warrant, a cinematic adaptation of the book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer, penned by ex-Tihar superintendent Sunil Gupta and journalist Sunetra Choudhury.
In an interview with PTI, Motwane said he went for a "fly on the wall" approach to ensure effective engagement. "I told my crew constantly that you are a 'fly on the wall', or you get vicarious pleasure from peeping into somebody's room. That has been the operative mantra throughout."
The series, which premieres January 10, dramatises Gupta's past experiences, and those of his colleagues, in Tihar dealing with its notorious inmates and the complex politics involved in the events.
Motwane cites David Fincher's Netflix series Mindhunter as one of its minor influences. To achieve a sense of verisimilitude, Motwane gathered insights from Gupta aside from visiting Tihar jail to study the functioning of its authorities and inmates.
"There is something voyeuristic about looking at a jail," he says. "00.01 per cent of the population of 99.99 per cent will never go inside the jail but there's an intrigue about what happens inside. What are the people like? Are they all criminals? Are there any silver linings?"
The Udaan filmmaker added that he thought it would be interesting to make Gupta as a guide for the audience. "The lens was always about Sunil's story and if he is the centre of the wheel, the focus is on the spokes that are going to go around, him and his colleagues, family and the relationship with prisoners."
Motwane last directed the Ananya Panday-starrer CTRL for Netflix.
