In Person: Taak by Udit Khurana
Recently screened at the Dharamshala International Film Festival, Udit Khurana’s directorial debut Taak (Tracker, 2024) offers an examination of lives on the margins in societies of control. Working as a female bouncer in a nightclub in Delhi, former athlete Shalini feels responsible for Komal, a young girl from her sports academy in Hisar, whom she has taken under her wing despite being relative strangers. Together, they carve out spaces of warmth and camaraderie. Yet the anonymity granted by the big city no longer seems possible in their dystopic present when the nightclub enforces biometric attendance in the form of a watch with a tracking device. While Shalini acquiesces to her own surveillance, her tenuous position at work demands that she ensure Komal’s conformity to the system as well. Bound by feudal ties but navigating the coldness of the city with their own personal demons, tensions between the two colleagues flare. As the film unfolds and Komal remains an enigma, the audience is left uncomfortably conscious of their own participation in the need to know about the lives of others. A cinematographer by training, Khurana is keenly aware of the possibility of the camera and the power it holds. Exploring the seen and the unsaid, Taak unravels the dynamics between mentor and mentee in a world where new technologies of surveillance merely serve to reinforce older systems of oppression in insidious ways.
In this episode of In Person, Khurana speaks about his directorial vision for the film, the heightened reality that is engendered by the very presence of a camera, the effect on mental health due to the technologically determined nature of the gig economy, the invasiveness of society’s gaze upon women, the multiple cities that exist simultaneously in Delhi and the experience of screening his film at DIFF.
Born and raised in Delhi, Udit Khurana is a cinematographer by training from L.V. Prasad Film Academy in Chennai. His notable projects include Ghaath (Berlinale Panorama, 2023), The Hunt for Veerappan (Netflix, 2023) and For the Love of a Man (Venice Film Festival, 2015). He was a Berlinale Talent at the prestigious Talents Summit, part of Berlinale 2023.
(Featured Image: Still from Taak (2024) by Udit Khurana. Taak is from Museum of Imagined Futures, produced by Storieculture and supported by Omidyar Network India. Image courtesy of Oddity Films.)
Recorded on 10 November 2024.
To learn more about DIFF, read Mallika Visvanathan’s interview with the founders Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam.
To watch earlier episodes of In Person from the previous edition of DIFF, watch Arundhati Chauhan’s conversations with Nishtha Jain on her film The Golden Thread (2022), Clara Kroft Isono on her film Bawa’s Garden (2022) and Shahrukhkhan Chavada and Wafa Refai on their film Kayo Kayo Colour? (2023).
