Shanghai is a political thriller that looks at how politics – the tools of power- is remote controlled by the governing class over the poor, uneducated masses in India.

The new age industries, in collusion with state governments (even leftist state governments!) oust farmers from their home and land to forcibly acquire land without adequate compensation.

The suave, elite, seemingly benign governing class takes decisions which essentially benefits and perpetuates its own interests while deeply hurting the uneducated, unaware urban poor by leaving them vulnerable to the manipulations for votes. As a result, world’s largest democracy sometimes translates in the rule of mob.

Court cases, justice department inquiries, police probes are subverted, ignored or mired in red tape. Democratic channels subvert the very ethics that they are supposed to uphold. Dissent is suppressed, or blanked out through new age media blitz tactics. Political assassinations are left unsolved.

This is the background to the Indian adaptation of the story loosely adapted from the book Z, written in 1966 to reveal the facts behind the assassination of a prominent Greek Liberal MP in 1963. It is the story of State oppression and collusion in crime – a theme I think very relevant to contemporary India.

Shot in a gritty, uber realistic manner to focus on the grimness of the unchecked, unplanned development to become a Shanghai overnight.

The protagonists of Shanghai, instead of being all good, or all bad are a mix of courage and cowardice, ego and desire, ambition and conscience – normal Indians, trying to get by with the bewildering challenges of modern India.