Kiran Rao unplugged

In a f2f chat with Kiran Rao, the director told us about Humans In The Loop, what ails independent cinema, and her Kolkata memories

- Kabir Singh Bhandari

Kiran Rao was part of a recent film-based summit where we managed to catch up with her and have a faceto-face interaction. When I told her the common link between the both of us was that we both went to school at La Martiniere in Kolkata, the city where she had spent a huge part of her early life in, it set a jovial tone to the conversation.

One of the topics we spoke to her about is the indie film Humans In The Loop, for which she is an Executive Producer. Directed by Aranya Sahay and produced by Storiculture, it is about an Adivasi woman from Jharkhand who finds herself interacting with artificial intelligence, unraveling its hidden biases and ethical dilemmas. The film premiered at MAMI and received a nomination for Gender Sensitivity from the Film Critics Guild.

The film was developed as part of the Storiculture Impact Fellowship, which supports socially relevant storytelling in media. It was created in partnership with the Museum of Imagined Futures, which focuses on the intersection of technology and society. Excerpts:

Q. How did your association with Humans In The Loop start?