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An uncanny blend of observational documentary and tropical sci-fi, the film follows the stories of six 'call agents' who answer US-American 1-800 numbers in a Bombay call center. The agents work for one of the new glass and steel corporations that have mush­roomed in a stark industrial swampland outside the city. Their offices are only open at night in order to cater to daytime callers in America. "Shooting a film set in a call center seemed like a natural way of looking at this new generation – future Indians who live in India and abroad simulta­neously. What we discovered while making this film was incredible – characters who had a hard time sep­arating the real from the virtual. The strange nature of this world of replicas dictated the structure of the film. It seemed meaningless to make a cinéma vérité portrait of a call agent who fakes his identity – that's fiction already! It also seemed futile to focus on just one character when the agents already exist in the most fragmentary ways: one collects only names, the other only numerical data, etc. Since the call center functions like a hive, with agents assigned to teams and leaders, it seemed more appropriate to make a film about a network of individuals – six, the num­ber in a team. In the film, there are three sets of Johns and Janes who appear in order of their team's ranking. In that sense, the film documents the tran­sition from Indian (worst sales ranking) to American (highest sales)." Ashim Ahluwalia

Production: Future East Film, Bombay

World Sales: Cinetic Media

Sound Design: Ashim Ahluwalia

Cinematographer: Mohanan Mukul Kishore

Composers: Masta' Justy, Metamatics, Thomas Brinkmann, Minamo

Cast: Glen Castinho, Sydney Fernandes, Oaref Irani, Vandana Malwe, Nikesh Soares, Namrata Pravin Parekh

Format, srceen ratio: 35mm, 1:1.85, Color

Running time: 83 minutes, 24 frames/sec.

Language: English

Funded by:

  • Logo Minister of State for Culture and the Media
  • Logo des Programms NeuStart Kultur