Itch

A man miraculously awakens from a 13 year long coma, and struggles to adapt to a world gripped by a bizarre affliction, which makes people violently scratch away at themselves.

“Born and brought up in Mumbai, I’ve always been interested in filming stories that capture the intimate lives of urban outliers, who resist conforming to social pressures. With ‘Itch’, my effort expands to satire and absurdism, while telling a tale about modern conformity through a glocal lens. Itch came from a feeling that human behavior today feels so much more primitive and animalistic… as opposed to the time when smartphones, social media, AI weren’t so ubiquitous. The by-product of our tech-addled world is that people today are freer to lean into their urges and compulsions without consequence. It’s an itch we helplessly scratch to the point of self-mutilation. It moved me to think what would happen to someone who would have gone comatose on the brink of this tidal sociological change, about a decade and a half ago. How shocked would they be, to witness this transformation, within the fraction of their lifespan?”