Acclaimed indie film 'Humans in the Loop' to premiere on Netflix

Mumbai-based independent filmmaker Aranya Sahay's Humans in the Loop will have its premiere on Netflix from October 31. Starring Sonal Madhushankar, the acclaimed film, which was screened at MAMI, IFFK, and the IFFLA, revolves around a tribal woman's foray into the tech industry and her interactions with artificial intelligence.

Backed by Goa's Storiculture’s Museum of Imagined Futures, Humans in the Loop was inspired by Karishma Mehrotra’s article “Human Touch,” which chronicles the involvement of Indian women from rural and semi-rural backgrounds and their contributions to the ever-expanding realm of AI and futuristic technology. 

A student of St. Stephen's College and Pune's FTII, Sahay had worked with filmmakers like Imtiaz Ali and Patrick Graham in the capacity of an associate and assistant director.

"The whole project started with an article, but where to go from there took much longer to develop. I started reading ongoing research about AI and also spent some time in Jharkhand, and from there many of my derivations started falling into place," Sahay told ASAP art, on the film's inception.  "Initially, the film was commissioned as a short film. But very quickly, I realised I could not tell a strong story, even in a thirty-minute-long short. The film needed a three-act feature structure." 

Adding that it was also driven by a personal element, Sahay shared, "Both my parents studied sociology. My father did not pursue it later, but my mother has done a lot of significant research. In fact, she was doing fieldwork for her doctoral studies in the Northeast when I was very young. I do not have too many memories from that time, but I was often with her and was even given a tribal name, Aranya Lalsiyama Sahay. So, my interest in Adivasi stories has been there for a very long time." 

Written by Sahay, the 72-min film, which has dialogues in Hindi and Kurukh, is produced by Mathivanan Rajendran, Shilpa Kumar, and Sarabhi Ravichandran. Harshit Saini and Monica Tiwari handled the camera, while Sahay and Swaroop Reghu edited it.

 

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