DROWNING
FEATURE PITCH / DELHI
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A FEATURE FILM / ENGLISH & HINDI LANGUAGE / GLOBAL APPEAL

Drowning.

A crime thriller set inside the contemporary music scene of Delhi.

READ THE SCREENPLAY
A lone figure standing among bodies laid out across a floor
KEY ART / DIRECTIONAL
DROWNING  ·  WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY DAR GAI  ·  PRATEEK KUHAD AS TARUSH  ·  MARGINAL MEDIAWORKS / D36 / JUGAAD MOTION PICTURES  ·  SHOOTING IN NEW DELHI
/01
THE PREMISEFEATURE / DELHI

He was an artist. Now he’s just a pawn.

“Tarush” is a down on his luck indie musician in Delhi who, after one break-out hit, is struggling to get out from under the thumb of an underworld record label boss.

He performs to crowds who aren’t listening, loads the gear truck, and goes home to a flat he shares with his six-year-old and a brother fresh out of prison. Then, one day… he opens the wrong equipment box.

/02
A gilded suburban living room

THE WORLD / DELHI & GURGAON-SOHNA

The other side of
India’s music scene.

DOOBNA / Hindi & Urdu for “drowning.” Also the song Tarush never manages to finish.

This is the contemporary Indian music scene from underneath: corporate banquet gigs where the crowd wishes for the music to stop, kitty parties in half-built Gurgaon suburbs where a musician must don themed costumes, and a label boss whose actual business runs in the false bottom of an equipment case. Nobody here is in Bollywood. The artists are adjacent to money but touch none of it.

THE CORPORATE CIRCUIT / WHERE THE WORK ISTHE KITTY PARTY / WHERE THE MONEY ISTHE EQUIPMENT TRUCK / WHERE THE PRODUCT IS
/03
ACT I

The last corporate gig, again.

The banquet hall / the peacock costume / KT’s signing party

A room of drunk office workers chants their company name while Tarush sings a soft, beautiful song nobody is listening to. He unplugs, and only then do they cheer. He loads the truck himself for four hundred rupees extra. From there, the film simply follows him through the economy he lives in: a kitty party in Gurgaon where he performs in a peacock suit and is paid in yellow Jordans, a bus where he invents a melody and loses it to a phone call, a school pickup, and a party at KT’s flat where a girl mistakes him for the house help.

  1. 01Leela asks to buy his guitar as a birthday gift for her daughter. It was his mother’s last gift before she left. She is already walking away before he finishes the sentence.
  2. 02On the bus he hums something new. The beggars outside the window climb out of their cardboard shelters into a full street dance — the first of the film’s musical numbers, and it happens entirely inside his head. Manu calls. The melody is gone.
  3. 03At KT’s party Tarush waits to ask for his advance. KT introduces a new signee, ignores him, then kneels in front of everyone and ties Tarush’s shoelaces. “I don’t promise anything to anyone. People achieve what they are capable of.”
Storyboard for ACT I
THE BANQUET HALL / THE PEACOCK / THE FALSE BOTTOM
ACT TURN

Backstage at a corporate gig, Tarush pushes the false bottom of an equipment box. It is packed with cocaine. So is every other box.

DRAMATIC QUESTION

How much can a person carry before he notices what he is carrying?

ACT II

What he has been, and the woman in the doorway.

The green room / the break-in / the hospital / the parking lot

Minutes after the discovery, Tarush walks back on stage and cannot sing a note. He returns to the boxes, does a line of the product he has been carrying for years, and finishes the set broken. He confronts KT, is beaten to the floor by his people, and goes home to find that Manu has bought a new fridge and a new guitar with money nobody in that house has. When the police finally bust KT, the brothers must make a plan to escape the city. They break into Leela’s house thinking she is out of town, and what began as a simple robbery turns into a kidnapping. The rest of the act is two men trying to do the right thing badly, at speed, with a bleeding woman in the back seat.

  1. 01KT, without blinking: “Good. So now you can be more careful with it.” And then, as Tarush swings at him: “Next time write a song, so that I can use you as a musician.”
  2. 02The brothers say the worst thing each knows about the other, break the room, and end up in bed with Glichu between them, all three crying silently. It is the most tender scene in the picture and it is a truce, not a reconciliation.
  3. 03A text: “We’re busted. Don’t say anything. Hide.” The police have KT. Tarush turns to Manu: “Okay. Let’s do it.”
  4. 04They run out of pockets and start hanging necklaces on each other. The door creaks, Manu panics and swings an iron rod, and Leela is on the floor. One heel knocks the marble all the way to the car. Tick. Tick. Tick.
  5. 05Outside the hospital she refuses to get out — “Take me out of here. Otherwise I’ll tell them you raped me” — then shows them the bruises and the bracelet blinking on her ankle. Tarush: “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Leela: “Do you look like you can help anyone?”
  6. 06In a parking lot she looks at the haul. “All this is travel jewelry!” — and then, when Manu asks what that means: “Fake! So that customs don’t stop you!” It will not cover the price of one passport.
Storyboard for ACT II
THE NECKLACES / THE IRON ROD / THE HEEL ON THE MARBLE / THE BACK SEAT
ACT TURN

Leela names the only score big enough: a Mahjong kitty party in South Delhi with a one-crore pot. Fifty-fifty.

DRAMATIC QUESTION

What does a decent man do when staying decent stops being available — and who is using whom once he stops?

ACT III

Panda, monkey, and a six-year-old with the cash box.

The Mahjong party / the petrol station / the highway

They rent animal costumes and rob a room of wealthy women playing for a crore, with Glichu carrying the box. It goes wrong. Then a woman runs out with a gun, Manu takes a round in the shoulder, and the film stops being funny at the exact moment it becomes a chase.

  1. 01At the petrol station, briefly, they are a family going to Mumbai. Glichu asks if there is school tomorrow. Manu asks if he will be okay. Then: “If a family goes to jail together, will they stay together there as well?”
  2. 02Leela is gone from the car and sixty per cent of the money is gone with her. They keep driving anyway.
  3. 03The chase. Tarush makes them sing the lullaby while shots come through the back window, makes Manu play his own terrible electronic track at full volume, and crosses a railway line ahead of a train.
  4. 04He stops at a police station and drags Glichu out of the car. “Look at me. Everything will be okay.” Then, holding his face: “Just… don’t become a musician.”
Storyboard for ACT III
THE MAHJONG PARTY / THE SHOULDER / THE LEVEL CROSSING / THE POLICE STATION
ACT TURN

The car flips. Manu is shot. Tarush is beaten in a ditch, smearing his own blood over a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes.

DRAMATIC QUESTION

If all he ever wanted was ten minutes to finish a song, does it count that he finally gets them here?

01

M, 34 / THE MUSICIAN

TARUSH

PRATEEK KUHAD as TARUSHPRATEEK KUHADATTACHED

He is genuinely good. The only two people who listen are a six-year-old and the occasional drunk stranger.

Thirty-four, and still loading his own gear. Tarush has the talent — you hear it the second he plays — and none of the machinery that turns talent into a career. He is polite to the people who humiliate him, patient with a brother who endangers him, and gentle with the six-year-old who is the only person alive who asks to hear his songs. What he does not have is the ability to say no. The film is the story of what it costs him to learn.

WANT

To stop playing corporate gigs and finish one song of his own — the lullaby he promised Glichu.

FALSE BELIEF

If he absorbs enough humiliation quietly, the people who own him will eventually let him go.

TACTILE ANCHOR

His mother’s guitar, the last thing she gave him before she left. He refuses to sell it, then sells everything else.

REGISTER

Almost never raises his voice. He takes every humiliation quietly — until he swings at KT, and pays for it for the rest of the film.

AROUND HIM

The four people who
will not let him go.

Room to assemble a stellar ensemble supporting cast. Actors’ actors will love being part of a first-of-its-kind indie film out of the subcontinent.

Casting reference image for MANU

MANU

THE BROTHER

The kind of man who headbutts someone to defend your honour, then blames you while helping you carry the body out.

WANTSTo be taken seriously as a musician by the one person whose opinion he cannot buy.

Casting reference image for GLICHU

GLICHU

M, 6 / THE YOUNGEST

Tarush wants him to have a better life. Glichu just wants them to stick together.

WANTSFor Tarush to finish the lullaby, and to know whether he still has to do his homework.

Casting reference image for LEELA

LEELA

F, 50 / THE CLIENT

She hosts the kitty parties, wears diamonds to brunch, and has been engineering her escape for fifteen years.

WANTSA passport, cash, and the Nepal border — in that order, and she will trade anybody to get there.

Casting reference image for KT

KT

M, 49 / THE LABEL

He kneels in front of a full party and ties Tarush’s shoelaces, then sends him out to do the work of a drug mule.

WANTSProduct. A new blue-eyed signee with two million followers, and a mule who is grateful for the work.

/04

THE SET-PIECES

Six set-pieces.

DROWNING is an innovative genre mash — a heist film, a musical, a comedy, a tragedy — all in a contained indie budget and wrapper. The set pieces are all executable for high production value on a lean budget. The film will look and feel like a $10–15M American indie, delivered on a $1M budget.

01

THE PEACOCK

A safari-themed kitty party in Gurgaon. Tarush plays the Jungle Book in a full peacock costume, the beak bobbing with every chord, and is paid in a shoebox of yellow Jordans. He puts the client’s fruit in the empty box and carries his old shoes home in his hand.

02

THE EQUIPMENT BOXES

No chase, no reveal music. He pushes a false bottom, sees crate upon crate of cocaine under the gear he has loaded for years, and has to walk back on stage and sing. He can’t. He goes back, does a line of it, and finishes the set.

03

THE BREAK-IN

Two brothers hanging diamond necklaces on each other in a dark bedroom because they have run out of pockets. Then a door creaks, an iron rod swings, and a woman is on the floor. One heel knocks the marble all the way to the car. Tick. Tick. Tick.

04

TRAVEL JEWELRY

The comic gut-punch at the centre of the film: the entire haul is costume jewellery kept for customs. Everything they have destroyed, they destroyed for nothing — and the woman they nearly killed is the one who has to explain it to them.

05

THE MAHJONG PARTY

A one-crore robbery executed in rented panda and monkey costumes at a South Delhi kitty party, with a six-year-old carrying the cash box and a room of women who are not remotely as harmless as they look. One of them has a gun.

06

THE HIGHWAY

A chase scored by a bad amateur EDM track, a railway crossing taken ahead of a train, a boy left at a police station with a bag of money, a car on its roof, and a man face down in a ditch filling with rainwater who finally remembers the song.

/05
Tarush playing, eyes closed

MUSIC

One melody…
constantly interrupted.

Music is the structure that binds the film together. Tarush is genuinely talented and you feel it the moment he plays — the joke his life keeps making is that the only people who actually listen are a six-year-old boy and the occasional drunk stranger.

“I’m writing a song. Actually today when I was on a bus I came up with the song but now I can’t remember it—”
/06

THE MUSICAL DESIGN

The music elevates reality.
It does not break it.

DROWNING arrives at the moment the Indian indie film and indie music worlds are breaking, both at home and on the global stage. The lullaby Tarush writes for Glichu is poised to be our “Falling Slowly” — the Academy Award winner for Best Original Song from “Once.” In a market where music is inextricable from theatrical film, DROWNING can reach global success by lifting off organic support in the world’s largest youth market.

01

THE LULLABY

One melody holds the film together — the song Tarush promises to write for Glichu. He hears it on a bus on page 6 and loses it to a phone call before he can record it. He almost gets it back several times. He finishes it in a ditch on page 72 and sends it as a voice note.

02

THE NUMBERS ARE NOT ESCAPE

The musical sequences happen inside Tarush’s head and last seconds: beggars rising out of cardboard shelters into a street dance; a bored corporate crowd turning around to sing his own song back to him. He snaps out of each one. They are what he reaches for his whole life and never gets to keep.

03

THE SOUND OF BEING IGNORED

The mix is the drama. In the banquet hall the room’s noise drops away until the song is surreally clear — then a Bollywood track blasts from a speaker shaped like a dog and everyone finally cheers, because he has stopped.

04

MANU’S TRACK

The joke that becomes the ending. Manu’s bad electronic beat is an embarrassment for seventy pages. In the chase, Tarush tells him to play it. The final cue is the lullaby over Manu’s track.

/07

THE TONAL CONTRACT

Real, funny, tragic,
chaotic, and impossible
to press reset on.

01

THE CAMERA

Handheld and close on Tarush for the grind; it stays at his level even when he is on the ground. In the final beating the camera never rises above the tarmac — all he can see is a pair of shoes.

02

THE CITY

Delhi and Gurgaon-Sohna: half-built roads, empty plots, 200 AQI inside the house, gated villas with jewellery on the floor and a bouncer for the jeweller. Wealth is loud, close, and completely unreachable.

03

THE COMEDY

Constant and never soft. A five-star rating exchanged for a one-star. Fruit in a shoebox. A robbery in a panda costume. The joke is always the cost of something, and it always lands just before the injury.

04

THE VIOLENCE

Sudden, clumsy and badly executed by people with no practice at it. Manu swings an iron rod because he is frightened, not because he is dangerous. Nobody in this film is good at hurting anyone.

05

THE LANGUAGE

English, in the register Delhi actually speaks it — with a handful of Hindi and Urdu lines from cab drivers, house help and party guests, subtitled without apology. The profanity maps status: cab drivers and brothers swear constantly; KT never raises his voice once.

06

THE CHILD

Glichu is never used for sentiment. He is the most practical person in the film — he packs the passports, finishes his homework during the robbery, and asks the one question the adults are avoiding.

/08

MOOD BOARD

Handheld, close,
and always at his level.

Directional reference only — not stills from this film. Grain, sodium light, wet tarmac, gold interiors, and the physical texture of things that cost money.

RUN
RUN
THE BOXES
THE BOXES
TRAVEL JEWELRY
TRAVEL JEWELRY
THE DOORWAY
THE DOORWAY
GURGAON
GURGAON
THE HIGHWAY
THE HIGHWAY
THE LULLABY
THE LULLABY
ONE CRORE
ONE CRORE
Night and propulsion reference grid
THE NIGHT / PROPULSION, SODIUM LIGHT, A MAN WHO CANNOT STOP MOVING
Family register reference grid
THE FAMILY / THE REGISTER THAT KEEPS THE CRIME FILM HONEST
/09

COMPS

ONCE meets GOOD TIME
with the global potential of SLUMDOG.

01

GOOD TIME

The engine: one bad decision compounding across a single stretch of hours, a brother you cannot save and cannot leave, and a city that keeps producing new ways to lose.

02

DANCER IN THE DARK

For musical numbers that live inside the head of someone the world is quietly destroying — and for refusing to let the songs rescue anybody.

03

ONCE

For music made in real time by people with no money and no platform, and for treating a song being written as an event worth building a scene around.

04

THE FLORIDA PROJECT

For the child’s-eye register that keeps a hard film honest, and for comedy and catastrophe occupying the same frame without either one winning.

05

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

The deck’s own shorthand — the scale, propulsion and subcontinental texture a global audience already has a door into.

/10

ATTACHMENTS

The package.

Marginal MediaWorks’ first fiction feature to shoot on location in South Asia, produced in partnership with D36 (Los Angeles) and Jugaad Motion Pictures (Mumbai).

01
DAR GAI

DAR GAI

WRITER & DIRECTOR

Berlinale Talents alumna. Debut feature “Three and a Half” (co-produced by Anurag Kashyap) streams on Netflix worldwide — 18 awards across 40+ festivals. “Namdev Bhau: In Search of Silence” premiered at Busan, BFI London and Palm Springs. Directed the “cold/mess” video for Prateek Kuhad — 300M+ views, Rolling Stone’s Music Video of the Year — plus award-winning brand campaigns for Levi’s, Netflix, Bumble and Tinder, including a Cannes Lions winner. TED speaker. Named one of the Top 15 Female Filmmakers of the Decade by Taste of Cinema.

02
PRATEEK KUHAD

PRATEEK KUHAD

TARUSH

Feature acting debut. “One of the country’s leading singer-songwriters” (Rolling Stone India). “cold/mess” was picked by President Obama for his 2019 year-end playlist; “Kasoor” was the first independently released Indian track to top Apple Music’s all-genre chart. Sold-out headline tours across North America, Europe, the UK, Asia and the Middle East; headlined Lollapalooza India. Third album “Full Moon Chamber” released 10 July via Atlantic Records.

03
SANJAY M. SHARMA

SANJAY M. SHARMA

MARGINAL MEDIAWORKS / FOUNDER & CEO

Developed and produced with Marginal’s Head of Film, Milan Chakraborty. DOOBNA is Marginal’s first fiction feature to shoot on location in South Asia; the company’s international slate spans Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Europe and Canada, with South Asia now a dedicated vertical.

04
DHEER MOMAYA

DHEER MOMAYA

JUGAAD MOTION PICTURES / CO-FOUNDER

Producer and co-founder of Jugaad Motion Pictures, Mumbai, alongside writer-director Dar Gai. Jugaad’s films include Pan Nalin’s “Last Film Show,” the first Indian film in 21 years shortlisted for the Foreign Language Oscar.

05
ABHI KANAKADANDILA

ABHI KANAKADANDILA

D36 / CO-FOUNDER & CEO

Leads D36, the South Asia–focused indie label behind left-field global collaborations including ZAYN on AUR’s “tu hai kahan,” Wiz Khalifa with colle$ttye on “BLUNTONOMICS,” and “Stadium Coupe” with Smino, Calm (Seedhe Maut) and Umair.

06

PRODUCTION

NEW DELHI

Shooting on location in New Delhi. Original story by Sharma, Chakraborty, Kanakadandila, Momaya and Gai; screenplay by Dar Gai.

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