A still from animation film Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust.
Bhopal-born Ishan Shukla's dystopian sci-fi animation film Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust is set for its world premiere in the Bright Future programme at the 2024 International Film Festival of Rotterdam (IFFR, January 25-February 4).
The film represents a significant first. Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust is the first-ever internationally co-produced Indian animation venture to be selected by a major film festival. Targeted at mature audiences, it marks a clean break from Indian animation's roots in children's shows and mythological tales.
Shilpa Ranade's Goopy Gawaiya Bagha Bajaiya, an animated tale inspired by Satyajit Ray's classic children's film Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, went to the Toronto International film Festival in 2013.
Gitanjali Rao's Bombay Rose opened International Critics Week at the Venice Film Festival in 2019. The two films were Indian productions. Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust is an Indo-French-German co-production.
This film is a co-production between Red Cigarette Media (Ishan Shukla's Vadodara-based animation studio), Dissidenz Films (Paris-based production company), and Rapid Eye Movies (German production and distribution company), in association with Civic Studios (Mumbai and London-based production studio focused on impact storytelling) and French Sofica Cofinova 18. On the Indian side, it has been executive produced by Civic Studios' Anushka Shah and co-produced by Samir Sarkar.
The film was also supported by CNC Cinémas du Monde, Epic MegaGrants, Film¬ und Medienstiftung NRW and French region Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
The 103-minute film features a powerful, diverse voice cast, including Golshifteh Farahani, Asia Argento, SoKo, King Khan, Denzil Smith, John Sutton, and introducing Tibu Fortes and Shahbaz Sarwar. The guest voices will include Indian talents like Karan Johar, Shekhar
Kapur, Anurag Kashyap, and Piyush Mishra. The film's soundtrack is composed by Sneha Khanwalkar (Gangs of Wasseypur, Manto).
Schirkoa is set in a near-perfect, strictly regulated city where citizens are required to cover their heads with paper bags to dissolve their differences. Tensions rise when rumours of a mythical free land where people live without bags over their faces start to float and a fresh council member sparks an accidental revolution.
Is Shukla's film a political allegory? “Absolutely,” he says, “but I have taken fantastical liberties because one, it is an animation film and two, it is easier to convey an idea such as this through fantasy.”
He adds: “Schirkoa is what a city would look like in an alternate setting if you compress the entire world into it. It is multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial,” explains Shukla.
Animated political films set in a realistic space are not his kettle of fish, says Shukla. There is no reason, he argues, to choose animation as a medium if a story can be told through live action.
How has the partnership with international producers impacted the way Schirkoa has shaped up? “Bich-Quan pushed the film further in terms of ambition and scale,” says Shukla. “She understood that we were creating cinema, not just animation.”
She brought Golshifteh Farahani, Gaspar Noe, Soko and the Filipino auteur Lav Diaz on board. “She also set up the motion capture shoot in Angouleme (from where a large percentage of France's animation production emerges),” says Shukla.
Stephan Holl, who led the production of the music in Schirkoa, brought in Asia Argento and King Khan, says Shukla. Warsaw-based independent film distributor, New Europe Film Sales, has the international rights of Schirkoa.
Shukla, now based in Baroda, is a BITS Pilani dropout who honed his animation skills in Singapore. On his return to India, he made a 14-minute short, Schirkoa (2016).
The animated short on which his first feature is based went to numerous festivals, won many awards and sold to channels across the globe, besides being longlisted for the Academy Awards.
“I made a bit of money (from the short film) and realised that such projects could be pitched internationally,” he says. “The medium has tremendous potential. “The way technology is progressing, even a small team can do wonders today,” he adds.
Apart from a small core inhouse team, Shukla also works with talent from all across the world. “For Schirkoa, my character designer is from China, my storyboard artist from Iran and my sound designer from France,” he says.
A few years ago, Shukla moved to Vadodara. He continues to work out of the city. “I was called by the Swaminarayan Temple to set up an animation studio for them. I was not a religious person but their plan to mix spirituality with virtual experiences was super intriguing,” he says.
“Rather than working for a random animation studio in Mumbai, I decided to give this a shot,” says Shukla. “I had seen life in the Mumbai industry. There was nothing new left for me there. In any case, Vadodara is very close to Mumbai. One can drive down whenever one wants.”
Shukla has The Bandits of Golak, an episode of the animated Star Wars: Vision, Volume 2, under his belt. It began streaming on Disney+Hotstar earlier this year. The 16-minute fiction is about a brother and his Force-sensitive sister who are pursued by the Empire. They seek refuge in a vibrantly colourful dhaba in Rajasthan.
“It is different from Schirkoa. Its tone is lighter because it is meant for all segments of children,” says Shukla. With a score by Khanwalkar, The Bandits of Golak had a voice cast of Suraj Sharma, Neeraj Kabi, Lillete Dubey and Sonal Kaushal.
Schirkoa has been developed entirely in a video game engine, Unreal Engine. “What you see on the screen is a living, breathing, immersive world. Technically it is something new,” he says. It, feels Shukla, could be the future of animation filmmaking.
Traditionally, animation filmmakers would only have rough storyboards or a grey viewport preview to anticipate the look of a finished film. A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) system, in contrast, allows shots to be realised in far more creative, controlled and innovative ways. In a game engine, the filmmaker can accurately gauge the final look of the film.
Shukla sees great potential in the swelling tribe of geeks entrenched in the pop-culture phenomenon across the world, not just in India. “They play video games, read graphic novels and want to watch new, more mature animation films. We might, therefore, have a chance of a breakthrough. I would definitely want Schirkoa out in the theatres,” he says.