In contrast to the majority of Indian youth today, Vikramaditya Motwane actually dreamed of becoming an engineer when he was young. However his mother, Dipa De Motwane, who took up a job as a line producer post her divorce, dragged him with her to work on movie sets. Though bored of watching shootings at first, he soon started to take interest in filmmaking as he got more involved in the process.

He started his film career assisting Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and later Anurag Kashyap with their films. His directorial debut Udaan was a coming of age drama about a boy trying to fulfil his dream of becoming a writer. While working on a film as an assistant he saw Sixteen, a movie about a teenager trying to raise money for a new home. This left a deep impression on him, which materialized as the script of his directorial debut. He struggled to find a producer for seven years, as most turned him down after finding his script and cast to be commercially unviable. Motwane found a saviour in Anurag Kashyap, who recognized his talent and produced the film. The film went on to win many accolades, despite its underperformance in the box office.

This paved way for him to make more critically acclaimed works like Lootera and Trapped. He soon found himself wanting to tell stories that ‘didn’t have to be told in two-and-a-half hours with an interval and three songs inserted into it’. That is how Motwane landed up with Netflix, where he spearheaded the production of India’s first Netflix series, Sacred Games. He is also one of the producers of India’s other Netflix series, Ghoul.

This APOGEE, catch the man who gave Indians the opportunity to see characters swear in Hindi on screen, as he recounts all the “spicy” stories of his life and work in Papyrus Trails, the Literature Festival of BITS Pilani.