Impulse
Adrian Cheng is a Chinese 60 year old depressed, recently retired banker in Singapore. Mouni Roy is a 35 year old Bengali actor in Mumbai. They meet at an audition online post which Mouni spends a day teaching Adrian acting over video calls walking across Singapore and Mumbai.
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Aditya KripalaniDirectorTikli & Laxmi Bomb, Tottaa Pataaka Item Maal, Devi Aur Hero, Not Today
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Project Type:Screenplay
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Number of Pages:65
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Country of Origin:Singapore
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Language:English
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First-time Screenwriter:No
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Student Project:No
Singapore/ India based writer- director, Aditya Kripalani is a script writing graduate from the Film and Television Institute of India. Aditya Kripalani has been the Creative Head of IDream Production, the company that distributed Monsoon Wedding in India. He’s been credited as the Script Consultant on multiple award-winning films like ‘Tahaan’, and ‘Jogwa’.
Since 2008 he’s written 3 bestselling novels, ‘Back Seat’, ‘Front Seat’ and ‘Tikli and Laxmi Bomb’. His third novel, became his first feature film, which he wrote, directed and produced. Along with being screened at a lot of film festivals, the film has won many awards such as Best Film award at the 9th Berlin Independent Film Festival, 2018; Best Film - Gender Equality award at the 20th UK Asian Film Festival, 2018 and Best feature at the New Jersey Indian & International Film festival, 2018 etc . Tikli and Laxmi Bomb also had its Premiere in Singapore in May 2018 and received an overwhelming response from the audience. Tikli and Laxmi Bomb is currently streaming on Netflix.
In 2018, Aditya wrote his second film, ‘Tottaa Pataaka Item Maal’ which he also directed and produced. The film is about these four women from various parts of Delhi, meet by chance in a ‘ladies only’ taxi ride and get into an altercation with a man who’s teasing them. They end up choosing to make an example of him by teaching him what the fear of rape is. This film was also screened at various national and international Film festivals like Kala Ghoda Art festival in Mumbai, the 21st UK Asian Film Festival in London, UK and 17th Garden State Film Festival, New Jersey, 2019.
In 2019, Aditya wrote his third film, ‘Devi Aur Hero’ which is about a A therapist who is himself seeking help for his sex addiction, fights hard to try to help his newest client, a sex slave who’s escaped her captor but is plagued by multiple Selves in her mind that emanate from years of abuse. The film won the NETPAC award for Best Film at the 25th Kolkata International Film Festival, 2019.
My name is Aditya Kripalani.
I’ve found, over the past 17 years that writing is my way of dealing with life. My coping mechanism if you will. Happiness triggers writing. Sadness the same. I feel I’ve become a conduit for themes of a certain kind, about biases, prejudices, silent revolutions, noisy ones too, to come into the world as ideas through me. I’ve become a funnel for life to drain through and for the wheat to be left back in the form of stories. And this whole pandemic time has made me introspect about how connections between us, go so much deeper than physical contact or meeting in person. That’s sad but also beautiful.
Impulse is a story about connection, the power of it and the ability to sustain a connection in spite of the distance. Our perceptions towards distance have been ever-changing, something I am particularly intrigued by. A few decades ago, if someone you knew moved from one country to another, then investing in a transatlantic relationship would have been far more taxing than it is today. You would never think to see or hear from them as often as you can today. In today’s digital age, one that prioritises instant gratification, we take for granted the connections that can be made so easily. Overcoming the distances with the help of phone calls, social media and everything in between. The distances introduced in Impulse are less to do with spatial gaps and more to do with the circumstantial distances that divide us in society. Impulse explores the connection between two people who meet at an online audition casting, Adrian Cheng from Singapore and Mouni Roy from Mumbai. The same audition casting, the same opportunity and yet two vastly different personalities who have traversed their own terrains in entirely opposite directions. The story follows Adrian, a depressed 60 year old man who left his successful career in banking to find his footing as an actor in Singapore and Mouni Roy, a 35 year old struggling actress in Mumbai.
The script tackles the collision course of commerce and creativity through the shared conversations between Adrian and Mouni as they get to know each other before an audition casting. An understanding of struggle and the ability to empathise with another person without being able to physically place your feet in their shoes.