Gippi director Sonam Nair on her upcoming shows and challenges in the OTT industry

Gippi director Sonam Nair on her upcoming shows and challenges in the OTT industry

It is difficult to sell stories to a particular platform she says.

Sonam Nair

MUMBAI: Sonam Nair, director and writer best known for her work in Wake Up Sid, Gippi and The Trip in a fireside chat at the Content Hub 2020 spoke at length about directing digital and television series.

After working as an assistant director in Wake Up Sid and Vishal Bharadwaj’s Saath Khoon Maaf Nair made Gippi a movie based on her own life. Nair poured her heart out while addressing social stigmas and how she was bullied and body shamed as a kid. However, things were never easy for her. She had to wait for three years to make a sex comedy film. Finally, a short film based on the same ethos of sex comedy Khujli starring Neena Gupta and Jackie Shroff resurrected Nair’s career.

“I don’t think in a way which is a very large screen, having lots of special effects, ensemble star cast. I think simple, relatable stories can have humour attached to it. This whole digital platform opened up for me  and I could tell stories I wanted to tell. After Khujli I directed the second season of Trip, I directed Kaafir and now I am working on a story written and directed for Netflix called Masaba and Masaba," she said.

The  show is based on the bond between a real-life mother-daughter duo of ace fashion designer Masaba Gupta and Bollywood actor Neena Gupta.

While addressing the issues prevailing in the content industry Nair said, “It is difficult to sell stories to a particular platform because this not how OTT platforms work. It is an anthology of supposedly six short films that works otherwise platforms are quite scared to take just one story.”