Don't rotate your phone

Tight shots, crazy plots, three-minute episodes, a juicy cliffhanger — it's all coming to a mobile screen near you

- Reshil Charles

What are micro dramas? Anne Chan, a Hong Kong-based distributor for the medium, described them as the '90s soap-opera The Bold and The Beautiful on steroids.

She said it in an interview with NPR in February, but it's a fitting analogy. The videos that swim through our feeds are certainly micro - they last 90 seconds to three minutes. And they pack in the drama - it's exaggerated tragedy, horror, comedy and romance. But their real calling card is that they're all tailored to the mobile-screen, a portrait mode that is longer than it is wide, rather than the wide frames of the cinema or TV screen.

The genre took off in China around 2018, and has been popular in Indian regional languages too. No surprise there; our phone has become our primary screen. But some filmmakers view the new format as the future of cinema. Is it?

Edge of tomorrow

In March, Mumbai-based Orange Elephant Studios and DOT Media, produced Unmatched, a thriller about a woman who outsmarts her stalker. Each of its 16 episodes ran for only three minutes and ended on a cliffhanger. Unmatched was released only on Instagram, and only on digital creator Sakshi Keswani's page, (@_BeingSuku_). Keswani has 2.1 million followers and played the lead, Arohi. It was possibly India's first micro series.