Rebels without a pause

Four rebellious youngsters embark on a road trip in search of a mythical drug. This is the premise of Agneya Singh’s first feature film, M Cream . There has been no aggressive publicity for the film, which was made in 2014, but it has won 10 awards at various international film festivals, including Best Feature Film at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Figs (Imaad Shah), a student at Delhi University, is a rebel whose life is thrown off course when there is a scarcity of hash, depriving him of his favourite pastime. Along with fellow students, he goes in search of M Cream, a mythical form of hash. At the heart of the narrative is an exploration of the various modes of rebellion. “I grew up in Delhi and heard about this urban legend, M Cream, from a friend who had a friend who knew about it,” says writer and director Singh, about how the idea for the film came to be. “It was the ultimate act of rebellion and defiance.” The filmmaker spent a lot of time at the Delhi University campus and among friends who studied in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. “I wrote the script a couple of years ago, but found it more relevant now,” he says.

Through the film, Singh raises socio-political issues using the premise of a road-trip that the protagonists undertake. He reflects on the era when he was young. “I grew up in the 1990s, a time when movies, art and films were commercial and superficial. In the last five years, I have seen a rebellion against this. I found

M Cream to be an interesting plot device, of what it is like to be a young person growing up in India today.”

The superficiality of the 1990s, Singh says, burst after the 9/11 attacks. “Ever since, right-wing extremism and fanaticism have been on the rise,” he says. “But resistance has also emerged. The question is, ‘Who is going to win? Will the world shift to the centre, left or right?’ In urban India, there have been a number of student movements, environmental movements, movements against communal forces. A lot of people speaking out are young.”

This finds expression in the film, says Singh. “The film is an interplay between rebellion and conformity, apathy and activism. It is a portrait of young India. Each of the four characters embodies apathy, rebellion, activism and conformity.” But Singh’s M Cream is no sob fest; it’s meant to be entertaining. “One can see it at a surface level. But it’s been done in a poetic and philosophical way. It’s not preachy, though,” he says. “We do raise a lot of questions, but we don’t give solutions. It’s the questions that are important.”

Though drugs may be at the centre of the narrative, they are neither glorified nor condemned. “The film doesn’t take a moral position on drugs at all. And yet it reflects the life of a young person,” says Singh. “In the 1950s UN Convention, India had opposed the move to ban marijuana, but bowed down to pressure from the United States.”

The 26-year-old director, son of journalist Seema Mustafa, is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and has made documentaries before. “I once had an elderly audience member say about M Cream that this is not a film, it’s a documentary,” he says. “I took this as a compliment, because the film has elements of cinéma vérité and is a narrative with which the audience would be able to connect in a more emotional way.”

M Creamwill release in theatres on July 22.

The film has won

10 awards, including Best Feature Film

at the Rhode Island

Film Festival

Rebels without a pause

Agneya Singh’s M Cream tells the story of young rebels immersed in a world of ‘drugged out delirium’