DOK Industry Podcast · DOK Leipzig – International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film

India Spotlight - Part 1

·40 min·2 clips

Selvamani arrived with a “fever dream” about Veerappan, and Apurva says they talked for six hours.

1. DOK Industry Podcast season 5 focuses on India Spotlight - Part 1, which centers on The Hunt for Veerappan and Women of My Billion. 2. Sunil Sardarangani moderates the discussion with Apurva Bakshi, producer on both projects, and Selvamani Selvaraj, director of The Hunt for Veerappan, whose credits include Neela, Kantha, and work with Ang Lee on The Life of Pi. 3. The episode asks why Veerappan’s story became a four-part documentary and how the team built a version that could travel beyond India. 4. Apurva says Selvamani approached her at the NFTC Film Bazaar in Goa with a story he had to tell, and they talked for six hours before she agreed to consider it. 5. Selvamani says Veerappan was the “mustachioed bandit” and “boogeyman” of the 1990s, a figure parents used in warnings to children in northern India. 6. Apurva says the wider story opened “a wormhole like Alice in Wonderland” once they looked beyond the public caricature of the bandit. 7. Selvamani says the story stayed with him because he grew up hearing about Veerappan’s forest hideouts and the police search for him. 8. He says reading books such as Chasing the Brigand by K. Vijay Kumar and the Tamil book Soladar Tohtti deepened his interest in the manhunt and its impact on indigenous communities. 9. Apurva says Soladar Tohtti moved him because the author was a lawyer who spent 10 years fighting human-rights violations tied to the operation. 10. Both filmmakers say the documentary had to be told by the people who lived through it, including gang members, officers, journalists, and villagers. 11. Apurva says they avoided “picking a side” and kept their own judgments out of the telling. 12. She says their interviews became “cathartic” for people who had carried the story for years without closure. 13. Apurva says Muthu Lakshmi needed two and a half years to agree to speak from her own perspective. 14. Selvamani says some gang members took months to open up, including Mahalingam and Gopinath in Gopinatham village. 15. The team says patience was essential in nonfiction because memory, when trusted, cannot be recreated with scripted tools. 16. Apurva says the series uses no recreation, because imposed visual cues would replace the audience’s own imagination. 17. Selvamani says the structure was shaped with executive producer Kimberly Hassan, who helped turn a large archive into a four-part series. 18. Apurva says the edit balanced multiple storytellers, cliffhangers, graphics, and Janu’s music to reach younger viewers who may not know Veerappan’s name. 19. This episode will appeal to viewers interested in Indian documentary craft, long-form journalism, and the making of The Hunt for Veerappan. 20. This episode may be less useful for listeners who want only plot summaries or short-form entertainment.

As heard by us

A patient look at trust and point of view across two Indian documentaries.

Season five opens with The Hunt for Veerappan and Women of My Billion, then moves into the slower work of earning a story. The most affecting stretch comes when Apurva Bakshi talks about trust, about Muthu Lakshmi taking two and a half years to come on board, and about holding…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want the producer-side work behind two Indian documentaries, this is your lane.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from DOK Industry Podcast