Tanmaya Shekhar’s directorial debut, Nukkad Naatak (A Street Play), has been honoured with a Special Jury Award at the 30th edition of the Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) 2024.
The film, which had its world premiere at (KIFF) from December 4–11, was featured in the ‘Indian Language Films’ competition.
Nukkad Naatak introduces fresh faces Molshri and Shivang Rajpal, making their first appearance in a feature film. Nukkad Naatak was earlier selected in the inaugural Tasveer Film Market as a Work-in-Progress Feature.
Molshri and Shivang, both debut actors, have a strong theatre background with performances at Prithvi Theatre, NCPA, and more.
A 107-minute drama film produced by Kayaantaran Studios is about best friends Molshri and Shivang, expelled after a canteen robbery. To have any chance of reinstatement they are presented with an impossible task – enrolling 5 children from an impoverished slum into a local school.

Nukkad Naatak creatively promoted the film at (KIFF) with the cast and crew dressed in black kurtas and red chunnis, the attire of street play performances. They performed mini Nukkad Naataks throughout the day, even at the press conference.

Tanmaya’s latest short ‘Scenes from a Pandemic’ was nominated for Best Film, Best Writer, and Best Director at the Critics’ Choice Awards India 2024.

Excited about the win, director-producer, Tanmaya Shekhar says, “KIFF has been an amazing experience. The audience is so passionate and vocal in their support of the film – we had hundreds of people tell us that the film should be released theatrically, and college students offered to host screenings in their film societies. Weeping queer couples, laughing young people, emotional senior citizens – we saw the entire breadth of reactions to our screenings.”

Molshri, the actor-producer on the film, says, “We hope that this audience reaction and the jury prize will take us one step closer to our ultimate goal of a national OTT/streaming release.”

Cast and Crew

Written & Directed by Tanmaya Shekhar

Starring Molshri, Shivang Rajpal, Nirmala Hazra, Danish Husain
Produced by Molshri, Medha Khanna, Tanmaya Shekhar

Executive Producer – Naresh K Vashisht

Cinematography – Ihjaz Aziz

Editor – Sruthy Sukumaran

Music – Parthhesh Menon

Lyricist – Yogesh Dimri

Sound Design – Rahul Prabhakaran

Costume Designer – Amruta Date

Production Designers – Shadman Ali, Mehvish Ali

Colorist – Yash Soni

Line Producer – Ram Pravesh

Associate Director – Aniket Mishra
Director’s Biography

Tanmaya Shekhar is a Mumbai-based filmmaker. He writes about personal and sociopolitical issues from a whimsical and imaginative point of view. Nukkad Naatak is his first feature.
He’s made short films that premiered at New York Indian Film Festival, Cannes Short Film Corner, and are streaming on Shorts TV on Amazon Prime. His latest short ‘Scenes from a Pandemic’ was nominated for Best Film, Best Writer, Best Director at the Critics’ Choice Awards India 2024.
He wrote a climate-change script ‘Fragrance’, that won the Hollywood Climate Summit 2024, sponsored by NBC Universal.
Before Mumbai, he worked in New York City where he wrote a documentary Farmers for America (PBS, 2020) and worked in production of HBO shows (The Plot Against America, Love Life) and a film by Focus Features.
Before becoming a filmmaker, Tanmaya studied Economics at IIT Kanpur.
Directors’ Statement

My whole life I grew up on an IIT campus. My dad was a faculty at IIT and subsequently I also went to study at an IIT. I spent the first 22 years of my life in this elite world, with a sprawling nature-y campus, expansive sports fields, and the most cutting edge STEM research in India.
Three years ago I went to Bagula Basti, an impoverished slum, a few kilometers away from the campus. My mom had begun teaching there in a makeshift school. I was blown away. I had spent almost 3 decades in close proximity to this Basti, not knowing of its existence and the people who lived there, a nomadic community living in kacche huts.
To me, that spoke volumes of the two Indias that live next to each other. And how the well-off Urban India lives completely oblivious of the India in Extreme Poverty.
That’s the genesis of Nukkad Naatak. It’s the story of two characters Molshri and Shivang, who share my worldview, who want to make a difference in the world, but have absolutely no idea of the Ground Reality in non-Urban India. And when they are forced to work in and interact with these slum kids, they discover a sense of purpose and identity that they hadn’t felt before.
Nukkad Naatak is not just about everything that is wrong in this world. It offers a hopeful, optimistic worldview and celebrates a theme that is dear to my heart… the power of art to make social change. Molshri and Shivang are leaders of the college nukkad-naatak society. And the street-plays inspire Molshri and Shivang to approach Basti folks with art and empathy.
About Production House

Kayaantaran Studios was founded by Molshri, an actor-producer, and Tanmaya, a writer-director, in Jharkhand, in 2023. Both of us came-of-age during the pandemic and hence our company is called Kayaantaran, which means metamorphosis, in Sanskrit.
We’ve finished one short film Scenes from a Pandemic, which was nominated for the Critics Choice Awards 2024. It was released by HumaraMovie on Youtube to critical acclaim.
Nukkad Naatak is our first feature film. It’s currently slated to premiere at the 30th Kolkata International Film Festival in December 2024.
Our goal is to occupy the position that Bong Joon-ho does in the cultural pantheon. He makes great films in his native Korean but also English language films in the United States. Similarly at Kayaantaran, we want to make great films in our native language Hindi, and also English films in the American studio system.