'The Underbug' Director Shujaat Saudagar On Working With Ali Fazal, Hussain Dalal: It Felt Liberating For All Of Us

The psychological horror film is directed by Shujaat Saudagar, who got candid during a conversation with Outlook, and talked about filming during the Covid-lockdown, working with the two actors and more. Excerpts from the interview:

'The Underbug' recently premiered at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) 2023. How do you feel about that?

As a filmmaker, writer I am really looking forward to seeing as many people watching it. We set out on this journey with an agenda of wanting to tell the story to people across borders, across countries. I’m really excited that the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne has picked the film, it was in Moscow earlier and Slamdance and there are many more festivals lined up in the coming months as well. Essentially, we are really excited that the Indian diaspora as well as the international audience is getting to watch what we have created.

The film made its world premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival and bagged the Grand Jury Prize for the Best Film. How has been the response since then?

It was really overwhelming to tell you very honestly; we didn’t expect that we would make it. We were just grateful that the film got an official selection. I was present for the festival myself and it was the best experience of my life. To watch so many films, so many filmmakers, meet them and interact with all of them was really very inspiring for me. The film winning the award was just the cherry on the cake for us. Such independent festivals and awards really kind of push the film more than anything else which gives it the recognition for people to watch. Our intent with the film was it reaching as many people as possible and winning the award has really helped.

The film stars Ali Fazal and Hussain Dalal in lead roles. How was it to direct them??

It was fantastic. We actually made this film during the first lockdown in 2020 when things had just started opening up. We shot it over a period of 10 days. It was a germ of an idea that I had during lockdown. No one knew what was happening, Covid was new and everything was topsy turvy. I bounced off the idea with Abbas & Hussain who are also my co-writers, we had nothing much to do, honestly, no one had anything much to do during that time so we came up with a script. Ali is a great friend although professionally we had never worked together. I contacted him, sent him the script, narrated the story to him and he jumped at it. I think, in a way, everyone was looking at some kind of outlet during that time because everyone was sitting in their houses wondering what was going to happen. It kind of felt liberating for all of us to step out of the houses and that environment.?

I spoke to a dear friend of mine and she owns a house in Khandala which is a 130-year-old family heritage property. We lived there and we shot this over 7 days total. Ali & Hussain really got into the skin of it. The process was very different. I told them why don’t you guys write your own dialogues because of the nature of the subject. I asked them to write what they think and then we streamlined it once we were there. The process itself was very collaborative and as we went along, we improvised on things. We would shoot it sequentially in chronology scene by scene and then vet it and reshoot the stuff that we were not happy with. It was a great experience and Ali & Hussain did a terrific terrific job.?

Ali and Richa Chadha are also the executive producers. How did that work out?

Ali and Richa had recently during that time formulated their own production company to do films that they believed in and this was a subject which was really close to us because we were all very involved in it. It wasn’t a typical script that I had written and pitched to an actor. It was more of a bunch of us who came together. Everyone wanted to kind of voice what they were feeling at that point in time. So, Ali & Richa were fantastic, they came on board as Executive Producers and did a great job. They were there at Slamdance. Both of them came and we had a great time.

The film was shot between the Covid lockdown in late 2020 somewhere in the interiors of Maharashtra. How was the experience?

It was great, but also slightly tough. We had to adapt to things. That is the time they had started giving out passes to travel, we had to arrange for all those passes. Thankfully I just had 2 characters in the film so it was not that difficult to keep social distance and we were a really small crew, there were about 18-20 of us. We carried 4 small lights, 2 lenses, a camera and that’s how we shot it. We just rehearsed and rehearsed and we kept shooting. As a process, it was very unstructured compared to the usual filming process. Honestly it was more of an idea in my head which we experimented with and thought we’ll come back and see whether we even have a film or not. That’s how we went about it. It was nice, we stayed in the house, we had our own cook because restaurants were still not fully opened and we kind of stayed in a bubble and shot it

It is a psychological horror. Did you have any apprehensions that it would cater to only a niche audience??

I think it just came from a high concept place where we just felt that the relevance of the subject would resonate with audiences across. There wasn’t a deliberate effort. In fact, it took me 2 years because I then got busy with my upcoming web show. Once the lockdown relaxed is when I got back to it, blocked the edit and that is when we thought okay, this could work. My other Executive Producer, Shaunak Sen, who was also nominated for the Oscars for his film, came on board and said let's try and push it let's see how it works.