AT THE INTERSECTION OF CULTURES

DIBAKAR DAS ROY EXPLORES SENSITIVE ISSUES OF RACE, COLOR AND IDENTITY IN HIS FIRST FEATURE FILM SET IN NEW DELHI STARRING NIGERIAN ACTOR SAMUEL ABIOLA ROBINSON.

- Renuka Methil

"You know, there's a lot of common space that can be explored," says Dibakar Das Roy, writer-director of the Indian film, Dilli Dark, that's currently doing the rounds of international film festivals.

The space that he mentions and transcends with his new film is the one occupied by the two blockbuster behemoths - Nollywood and Bollywood - dominating screens, OTT platforms, box-offices and the cinematic conscience worldwide.

So even if it has been shot in India, in the narrow, dusty alleys and packed streets of New Delhi and Noida and the archeological sites of Mehrauli - away from the staple Chandni Chowk and Connaught Place locales of mainstream Bollywood cinema - there's a tangible connection that could take the film to the lively lanes of Lagos. This link is a man named Samuel Abiola Robinson, the Nigerian actor who plays the lead in Dilli Dark, also Roy's first feature film.

The connection is also cultural, with a storyline profiling Michael Okeke, as one of the many Nigerians living in Delhi, studying for his MBA and dreaming of a corporate career in India, but gets "hopelessly stuck". He works as a small-time drug delivery guy to make ends meet, and it is "this job and his African identity which keeps his life coming back full circle; and his search for gainful employment lands him in the fringes of society, where the only person who takes him in is a sketchy godwoman".