HOMEGROWN DYSTOPIA

Animator Ishan Shukla's 103-minute-long film Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust, which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, features an impressive global voice cast

- Devarsi Ghosh

While working in Singapore years ago, Ishan Shukla began doodling himself out of boredom. He had imagined a life of "creative jams and discussions", but as an animation professional, he found himself "a faceless, replaceable person no different from others".

One day, he replaced his head in his drawing with a box. Thus began Shukla's dystopian world of bag-heads, which has resulted in Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust.

The 103-minute-long animated film premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam on January 28. The film is set in the fictional country of Schirkoa, where citizens are forced to wear a bag over their heads, thereby eliminating difference and individuality. The protagonist 197A is an average bag-head until he falls in love with a free-spirited woman and finds himself caught between the extremes of an oppressive regime and a liberatory paradise with no limits.