Kabir Mehta
Always a devoted cinephile, Kabir studied Economics at the Delhi University. An encounter with director, Ashim Ahluwalia led Kabir to Mumbai where he worked with the filmmaker on feature films as well as groundbreaking avant-garde cinema.
Kabir Mehta has since gone on to produce and direct his own work. His docufiction film titled SADHU IN BOMBAY premiered at the 29th European Media Art Festival where it won the ‘EMAF Award’ for best film. The film had its North American premiere at Slamdance Film Festiva and subsequently won the award for Best Narrative Film at the 55th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Kabir’s first feature length project BUDDHA.MOV (a doc hybrid) won a grant at NFDC Film Bazaar 2016 and had its world premiere at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2017.
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LIM | Less is More 2017
In a budding tech-start up in Gurgaon, North India, SAMIR, a lousy office peon, can’t believe his luck when he is offered a job as a virtual reality test user by JOHN, an American technologist who has just moved to India. With this job, Samir hopes to impress his darling older wife, MAYA.
Samir excitedly shares the news about his new job with MAYA as soon as he gets home, which is a tiny ram-shackled apartment owned by Samir’s scheming brother RAJ, who they both live with. But Maya hardly pays him any heed. She is desperate to have a baby and couldn’t care less about Samir’s work. Worried that age and biology have failed her, she’d like them to start visiting a spiritual ashram run by a charismatic guru who specialises in ancient Indian practices.
Craving to win back his wife’s affections and keep her away from Raj, Samir commits himself to visiting the Ashram with Maya. As Samir struggles to maintain balance between being a VR guinea pig for John and a caring husband for Maya, indulging in all her religious whims, he ends up exposing the fraudulent lecherous guru.
But this only makes matters worse for him and Maya. Samir is forced to seek help from Raj, who unsurprisingly deceives him and ropes Maya in to his moneymaking cam-sex racket with a vow to pay for her reproductive surgery. Although he is completely against it at first, Samir dons the role of a devoted husband again and joins her in the show. Together they gain a huge adoring fan base. Cash begins to ring in. It all seems to be working….
Until Samir learns of some devastating news about himself that may crush his relationship with Maya- that he is sterile. To his surprise, however, the cybernetic universe of John ends up offering him a lot more than what he had ever thought possible- a baby in virtual reality, which is perhaps his last resort to salvage his marriage with Maya.