EXCLUSIVE Interview | Not Just Bollywood: Director Sameer Saxena on the making of Netflix’s Kaala Paani

Filmmaker Sameer Saxena mentioned that the challenge was to keep the story of Kaala Paani authentic and believable. Since it is a futuristic film with a scientific background, the team of Kaala Paani had to be thorough with the research Edited excerpts from the interview: Sameer, it is a ‘masterpiece’, how did this idea come to you? The original idea came from the writer of the show, Biswapati Sarkar. He had gone to Andaman and Nicobar Islands long back during his childhood. And one of the tourist guides told him that this place is called _Kaala Paani_ because Kaal means mrityu (death) and that line kind of stayed with him and it’s also there in the episode. Then he went back and I also visited the place. During our visits we realized that it’s such a beautiful place. And if you are stuck over there, your connection to the mainland is kind of cut off. The place itself, we felt, can lead to a fantastic drama because no one ever has been able to escape this place. That core idea was very exciting and we got in touch with Tanya Bami, Netflix series head. She quickly approved and that kind of made the process smooth for us. It is a futuristic film, so what was the research that went behind it? Pandemic and the COVID-19 disease is kind of the backdrop of the show. It’s essentially a human drama and survival drama. A story of these characters and how they dealt with a situation when they got trapped in the island when this mysterious disease broke out. We wanted to take a futuristic angle to it. On it being a futuristic show, what is the kind of finer research that you had to go through because you had to think ahead of your time? The idea behind setting it in 2027 is to make people understand that we are nor superior to nature. We always tend to forget whatever has happened to us and continue with our life. We thought of setting Kaala Paani three-four years ahead of time because I think people have now forgotten about COVID. People now think that nothing is going to happen, but nature has its way of showing that we cannot take mother nature casually. As such there is no futuristic element in the show. But yes, we had to do a lot of research on the scientific and medical part of it and we were in touch with a lot of doctors to kind of get those right. It is very important that we do our research well especially when it comes to science and the medical field. The audience today are very intelligent and we cannot take them for granted. The challenge was to keep the story authentic and believable. Why was it such a harsh story and why did you have to kill the mother and young sixteen –year old boy? That was the method we chose to tell the story that certain characters survive and some don’t. That was not being intentionally harsh, but it organically came in the story.

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