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Aditi Banerjee’s female-centric mini-series Love at 5th Floor is now streaming on MX Player
This multi-lingual directorial debut by Aditi Banerjee is crowd-funded by 100+ people and centres around the lives of three urban Indian women
Love at 5th Floor (previously known as Happily Ever After), a five-part mini-series written, directed and produced by Aditi Banerjee is now streaming on MX Player. The multilingual series (in Hindi, English, Kannada and Punjabi) was crowdfunded by over 100 people and is the directorial debut of Aditi Banerjee. The show centred around the lives of three women in urban India in which the wife of a cheating husband, a young mother tempted by an online chatroom and an older polyamorous woman explore the world of love, desire, friendship and separation.
The web series stars Dilnaz Irani (Jodha Akbar, Decoupled, Aarya, Guilty Minds), Rachna Gupta (Web Series debut, youngest ever NSD graduate), Virginia Rodrigues (Seasoned theatre actor, Kannada film actor, Mahira), Vivek Kumar, Vaibhav Deep Chopra, Kafeel Jafri. The mini-series is around 1 hour and 40 minutes, with each episode ranging from 18 to 24 minutes.
The series was officially selected at Montreal International Film Festival 2020, Toronto Film Channel-2020, Lift Off Global Network- Paris- 2020. It won two awards, Exceptional Merit at Depth of Field International Film Festival and Award of Excellence at WRPN Women’s International Film Festival.
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The writer-director-producer Aditi Banerjee shares her joy about the launch of the web series. “The women in this series are relatable, strong, vulnerable and fallible. They break stereotypes associated with ‘modern’ Indian women and conventional ideas of a homemaker. Love at Fifth Floor explores this world where many of us live, and nothing is simple. It is an invitation for people to take a pause, question and be able to look at life around them with a fresh perspective.”
Director Aditi Banerjee
She adds, “The release is a big step for this labour of love. It is to give back to the hundred-plus people who made this happen through crowdfunding, the cast and crew who trusted me with my madness and now for the audience to make it their own”.
The series is shot by Prahlad Gopakumar (Dhh- National Award-winning film, Sonchidi by Amit Dutta), Sound Designed by – Vipin Bhati (Jodha Akbar, Dhanak), Edited by – Lavanya Ramaiah. OST is by – Atul Giri ( Independent Songwriter/ Singer based in Norway), BGM by Siddharth Gautam ( Lal Singh Chadda), edit advisors were Unni Vijayan, Hansa Thapliyal, Gouri Patwardhan.
Logline:
One day at the fifth floor of an apartment complex, a shocking video on a laptop, a tryst with the webcam, and an ugly confrontation with the family throw the lives of a young mother, a CEO, and a polyamorous professor off gear.
Synopsis:
Nalasha Apartments is like any other ordinary apartment in urban India, but with the extraordinary stories of three very different women. One evening, the successful CEO of a company, Anya Roy discovers a video of her husband having sex with another woman. In the neighbouring house, young and feisty Ikjot struggles to be a responsible mother and encounters her sensual self again through the world of online chatrooms. Opposite Ikjot lives an older woman- unmarried and polyamorous. Uma is a professor from a conservative Kannadiga family with not-so-conservative choices.
Anya finds it hard to confront her husband while living and working with him, Ikjot has a moral dilemma of being in love with her husband while discovering a new world online and Uma has a mysterious past that affects her. Each of them is vulnerable in their own way. The story unravels as these three women deal with love, desire, pain and separation. As they do that, their lives intersect and some unlikely choices and friendships emerge.
