Yoginder Kumar
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Film Making

I bunked school to watch movies, paid for with my savings and sometimes my father's pockets. Consider it his early investment.

Yoginder crouched mid-air inside a wooden frame with his hands held up like a director framing a shot

Just like every cinema lover, I used to bunk school to go and watch movies, sometimes with my own savings and sometimes with money I picked out of my father’s pocket.

Poster of Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!
the first one I bunked for

The first time was for Byomkesh Bakshi, the Sushant Singh Rajput one, and I still wonder why that movie did not do well, because the story was very gripping and surprising at times.

80 × 2 people = 160. Took 200. The other 40 was for afterwards.

The ticket was ₹80, I took ₹200 out of my father’s pocket for it, and he never found out, so Dad, if you’re reading this, consider it an early investment.

Ever since then it’s the movies that stayed with me that I remember, and a few of them stayed for weeks.

Poster of Lights Out
chills, for two weeks

Lights Out is a horror that gave us chills for a couple of weeks, and I have not looked at a light switch the same way since.

Poster of Go Goa Gone
zombies, but in India

Go Goa Gone is a dude comedy that perfectly worked zombies into an Indian setting for the first time, I guess, and I’ll take a correction on that from anyone who has watched more zombie films than I have.

I genuinely love Malayalam cinema, because they make very normal films with no random commercial stuff thrown in (no hero flying through a wall for no reason, for one).

Poster of Premalu
a rom-com that stayed

Premalu was a good rom-com that stayed with me for a while.

Poster of Good Night
no masala, still hooked

Good Night is Malayalam cinema’s magic again, a tragedy comedy so simple, no masala at all, and it still keeps you hooked.

And I’m a sucker for anything with twists and turns, Byomkesh Bakshi and Sherlock being the obvious ones.

A private detective who’s actually helping a murderer, because the antagonist is making him at gunpoint.

Which brings me to the first film I’d make. The pitch is on the yellow note, and yes, the detective is technically the murderer’s assistant.

So far the closest I’ve come is acting in a few reels for my brother, who’s a cinematographer, and what it taught me is that acting is not an easy job at all, especially once the camera is on you. (Nobody films you while you write frontend code, which turns out to be a luxury.)

What’s missing right now is money, which is the boring answer, but until I have the resources I can’t really start the process, so in the meantime I’ve started writing a few pieces, so that when the money does show up I’m not sitting in front of a blank page.

I know I’ll get there.