“Mumbai Was Our Biggest Collaborator”: Director Rishikesh Nair on His Short Film Layla
Indie filmmaker Rishikesh Nair in a conversation speaks about crafting Layla, a poetic exploration of freedom, madness, and the unpredictable beauty of Mumbai. With limited resources and limitless passion, Layla captures a raw world where the city becomes the film’s loudest character.For director Rishikesh Nair, Layla began not as a fully formed narrative, but as an experiment. “I wanted to explore freedom and madness,” he says. Working with limited resources, the team focused on making something meaningful and letting the film evolve naturally.At the center of Layla lies a striking question: how does society judge madness? Nair explains this through a simple metaphor: “If a man dances in the middle of the road, we call him unstable. But if you’re told he’s going to die in three days, how ...










