Trapped

A film set in Mumbai. Shaurya works in a call centre. Quiet, timid, alone. He loves a woman at work. Noorie is about to marry someone else. He tells her. She agrees, on one condition: a home must be found at once. Shaurya hurries. An agent shows him a place. A newly built tower; thirty-five floors and almost entirely empty. The building has not been handed over. The electricity is not connected, there is no water, and nobody lives there. The price suits. Shaurya moves in. The next morning the door locks. The key is outside. From there the film takes place in one flat. He shouts. Nobody hears; the building is empty and the surroundings are loud. His phone is dead. There is no electricity. There is no water. There is no food. The narrative from here is wholly survival. One man, one flat, days. He collects rainwater. He catches a pigeon. Then a rat. He tries everything to get out. Breaking the door, shouting from the window, lighting a fire, dropping a note. What the narrative is interested in is not an accident but a city: its idea is that in the middle of Mumbai, among millions, one person can disappear and nobody looks for him. Nobody notices because nobody knows him. Even his not coming to work raises no question. The camera stays in the flat. The narrative looks out only through a window and the city is always there, out of reach. Rajkummar Rao genuinely lost weight for the part and the film rests almost entirely on him. There is almost no dialogue. The running time is short; under a hundred minutes. Vikramaditya Motwane directed. Rajkummar Rao, Geetanjali Thapa and Khushboo Upadhyay are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes one-man survival films and Indian independent cinema. Who it is not for: anyone with a fear of enclosed spaces; the narrative aims straight at it.