Filmmaker Ayesha Sood’s extensive oeuvre spans diverse projects and genres — she is a seasoned professional of the field. However, her new docu series, Indian Predator: The Butcher Of Delhi, streaming on Netflix, is a project that led her to overcome many unforeseen challenges. “Firstly we started this during a pandemic. All our research and pre-production meetings were online. We started production at a time when people were isolating and not open to film crews entering their homes. Soon after we began, the farmer protests commenced and one of our main locations was Azadpur Mandi. There were curfews and bans on our drones from flying. Almost at every point, I was convinced this would never work out. We had to stop and postpone our shoot, so by the time we shot in Delhi and Bihar, we had entered one of the harshest winters in recent times. The crew had crew calls at three and four am, it was all quite brutal. When we got to editing and submitting our first rounds of cuts, the badly managed Delta wave hit us. Almost everyone working in the team had to deal with a personal tragedy. It was really non-stop. But here we are,” she tells me.
As a testament to the immense hard work of its makers, Indian Predator, with its tremendously absorbing and intriguingly self-reflexive composition, proves to be a triumphant gem of the true crime genre. The story of one of Delhi’s most notorious serial killers, Chandrakant Jha, is gut-wrenching. As the makers attempt to unfurl the many layers of his gruesome crimes and psyche, the pursuit of truth becomes an arduous and volatile quest, and the series navigates it with commendable ingenuity.
Below, Ayesha Sood tells us more about her journey and the Indian Predator’s making:
How has your craft as a filmmaker evolved over the years?
I started out by getting a job in the art department of Deepa Mehta’s Earth 1947. The production designer was Aradhana Seth and she took me under her wing. It was a co-production, which meant that it was partly internationally produced. To be honest, I was awestruck. I had never seen this kind of interdepartmental organisation. I was under the impression that film sets were chaos and madness, but it seemed like there was a clear method behind this madness. I continued to work in the art department for the next five years, in mostly independent cinema or coproductions like Monsoon Wedding with Mira Nair. I moved to being an Assistant Director (AD) in Lakshya with Farhan Akhtar.
Post this, I did a small short film with Nitya Mehra, which did really well in the festival circuit, and then did a few docu series here and there. Then I co-founded Jamun Collective in Delhi with Udayan Baijal, where we did a broad range of commissioned work, from documentaries, to advertising and podcasts. It was here that I really honed my skills and sharpened my craft has a filmmaker.
Which films and filmmakers have been your formative influences?
That’s a tough one because I watch so many films and so many filmmakers have influenced me in different phases. I think both Deepa Mehta and Mira Nair have. I loved both the films that I worked on, and not out of a bias, but I saw both works very closely, and I still believe they were special films. I was quite a Wong Kar Wai and Pedro Almodovar fan. I love Neeraj Ghaywan’s work, as well as Achal Mishra’s. I’m a huge fan of the true crime genre. I loved Innocent Man, Evil Genius.
Tell us about the origin story of Indian Predator: The Butcher Of Delhi.
VICE India came to me with the idea of Indian Predator. They had a pool of stories that were in various stages of research. Through a process of filtering, you measure which stories have the legs to become a series. It was 2020 and we werein the middle of a global pandemic, so geographically it also made sense for me to pursue it. Also, in 2012, I had directed season two of The Dewarists, and Samira Kanwar was leading that project and Ashwin Shetty was my AD on it. Both have led this series and I think they thought of me.
Could you give us some insight into the making of the series?
I was super lucky to have a strong and dedicated research and development team, led by Nandita Gupta. So our start point was definitely the case materials. I think early on, I had a sense that the reality of the migrant community and the ‘invisible’ people would be important for me to explore. Nandita then went about making contact with the important narrative heads, and we were lucky to get everyone we did. It’s a tough subject and people aren’t always keen to talk on camera.
Ayesha Sood
A lot of documentary making relies on the editing process. What did the editing process for this series entail?
We had a great team led by Anupama Chabukswar, and aided by Sumedh Nahare and Radhika Pathak. Documentary is particularly unwieldy to cut, because the material can take various shapes. It isn’t like scripted work, where you have the written word to follow. A major part of the time was spent in weaving in the new parts of the story that weuncovered during the shoot. We were also all at different locations and working remotely, which was new to all of us. But surprisingly, we had a really good rapport — we trusted each other’s instincts and most decisions were arrived at together. We also had the creative teams at VICE India and Netflix to guide us.
What did the process of unraveling the truth feel like? How has the making of this series affected you?
I thought I would be over the moon to be unravelling the story, but the truth is that the tragedy and horror of the whole story was the overriding emotion through this. The things we have heard and pictures we have seen will always leave an impression, not just on me, but on all who have worked on this story.
Lastly, what are you working on next?
I’m working on another docu series, I can’t talk about it at this time, but I can tell you its NOT crime.
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Text Nidhi Verma
Date 17-08-2022