Latest news with #White&Gray
India Today
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- India Today
How ‘Black, White & Gray' raises the crime saga bar
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated May 26, 2025)An intelligent filmmaker knows that all stories have been told already, and a fresh story means fresh storytelling. Case in point: the new Sony LIV Hindi series Black, White & Gray—Love Kills. Written, directed and edited by Pushkar Sunil Mahabal, the Rashomon-like six-episode series is part true crime mockumentary, part chase thriller, and full metafiction. What could have been a straightforward crime story is explored as a fake documentary looking into the aftermath of the crime, juxtaposed with its dramatic re-enactment. This style coaxes us to question the ethics of the true crime genre, and the intersections of caste, class and gender across which crimes A politician's daughter and the son of the politician's driver sneak out one night to have sex in a hotel. Later, CCTV footage suggests that the man has killed the woman and escaped with her body. The police allege that the man goes on to murder a cop and two others in his killing spree. The man has been absconding for two series is framed as a project by a western filmmaker visiting India. His mockumentary features interviews with friends and relatives of the victims, while the dramatic re-enactment shows what could have gone down between the man, the woman, and the three other victims. The filmmaker reveals his trump card at the end of episode one: he has tracked down and interviewed the of the most innovative Indian series in a long time, Black, White & Gray... is true gonzo filmmaking. At a time of despair in the Mumbai film industry over its products' staleness and commercial failures, Mahabal proves that imagination is all it to India Today MagazineTrending Reel
Time of India
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Seerat Kapoor, Palak Jaiswal and Delbar Arya honour their mothers' silent sacrifices
Television actresses , , and opened up about the profound influence their mothers have had on shaping their personalities and careers. While Seerat credited her mother for being her emotional anchor and strongest cheerleader, Palak shared how her mom's guidance and support helped her stay grounded in the face of fame. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Delbar Arya, too, expressed deep gratitude for the values and resilience her mother instilled in her, calling her the reason behind her confidence and strength. In an emotional note, Palak shared, "If I've ever looked strong or fearless, it's only because my mom's had my back like a rock - quietly strong, always there, no drama. While I was out chasing auditions, figuring out who I am, she just said, 'Tujhe jo karna hai kar, baaki main dekh lungi.' And that's exactly what she did. She's the one who's fought the real fights - with society, patriarchy, and people who thought they could say anything about me. I've never had to explain my choices because she fiercely does that for me. She cheers loudly, protects without being asked, and loves without condition. If I look invincible sometimes - it's because I was raised by her." The 'Black, White & Gray' actress also recalled how one of the most intimate scenes in the show made her question whether she should take it on. It was her mother's matter-of-fact clarity that helped her come to terms with the decision. "There was this intimate scene and I kept thinking-should I? should I not? She looked at me and said, 'Does it make sense for the character? Then why not?' That trust, that clarity gave me so much peace - I moved ahead without second-guessing," added Palak. On the other hand, Delbar Arya shared her deep appreciation for her mother, calling her the guiding force behind her growth. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now In a heartfelt note, she said, "Motherhood is a feeling, not just a role. To me, mothers are the most beautiful and pure souls. My mother has been instrumental in shaping the person I am today-my greatest supporter, my pillar of strength, and my lifelong guide." "Nurturing isn't defined by blood alone; it's about the love, energy, and compassion women bring into the lives of others. I celebrate all those women who care, guide, and love unconditionally," she added. On the occasion of , Delbar also reflected on the pivotal role her mother has played in shaping her life. The actress shared how her mother's love has provided the foundation for her growth and continues to inspire her every step of the way. Paying tribute to her mother, Seerat Kapoor fondly remembers how, from the very beginning of her journey, her mother instilled in her the confidence to aim high and the determination to put in relentless effort to achieve her goals. The 'Rabb Se Hai Dua' actress shared, "Working in the film industry comes with its own set of challenges just like any other field, however my mother has always stood by me. She's been my biggest critic, cheerleader, my mentor, best friend and my strongest support system. She's taught me to be fearless, focused, disciplined and not settle with my standards. Going beyond professions, she's brought me up to truly face life gracefully, without with being tainted. Thanks to my upbringing and conditioning, no matter what the circumstances, I have learnt to not be a quitter." "She's taught me resilience, grace and how to stay grounded no matter how high I soar. Her love lifts me through every challenge and inspires me to chase new dreams. Ultimately, it's the love of our mothers that keeps us steady and remind us we're never alone. A mother's love is truly the quiet force behind every success and the fuel that helps us move forward," Seerat added.
Hans India
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hans India
‘Black, White & Gray - Love Kills' review: Starts strong but fizzles out
SonyLIV's Black, White & Gray – Love Kills kicks off with a compelling premise, wrapping viewers in the intriguing world of crime, class divide, and manipulation. The series, directed by Pushkar Sunil Mahabal, follows Daniel Gray, a determined journalist who begins documenting a complex murder case involving four deaths and one prime suspect – a young man from a financially disadvantaged background, portrayed by Mayur More. Consisting of six episodes, the show lays its groundwork well. The accused, hailing from a poor family, falls for a rich girl whose father employs his own. Their secret one-night getaway triggers a chain of tragic events, beginning with the girl's sudden collapse. Assuming she's dead, panic ensues. What follows is a downward spiral involving three more murders, with the accused and the girl at the center of it all. Initially, the series seems to promise a gritty, emotionally charged crime drama. It touches on themes like social discrimination, corruption, and the misuse of power by the elite – all through the lens of a suspenseful murder mystery. However, despite this strong thematic base, Love Kills begins to lose its narrative grip post the second episode. The suspense unravels, scenes begin to feel disjointed, and the writing falters in tying together the emotional and investigative threads. Where the plot struggles, Mayur More's performance emerges as the saving grace. He delivers one of his career-best performances, portraying vulnerability, confusion, and desperation with raw honesty. His ability to embody the scapegoated youth lends the series a much-needed emotional weight, even when the script fails to deliver. The series makes an effort to spotlight societal issues like the stark division between rich and poor, the pressure to stay silent, and the dangerous consequences of lies spun into false narratives. Unfortunately, these messages are diluted by inconsistent pacing, poor editing, and lackluster direction. Black, White & Gray – Love Kills had the potential to be a standout crime thriller but ends up being a case of missed opportunity. While the intention was noble and the themes relevant, the weak execution and fragmented storytelling hold it back. Still, if you're watching for performances, Mayur More alone is worth your time.
Hindustan Times
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Blunt-force drama: Deepanjana Pal writes on the new series Black, White and Gray
Halfway into Black, White & Gray - Love Kills, there's a twist in the tale. It is one of many in this series created, written, directed and edited by Pushkar Sunil Mahabal, but this one is pivotal. Streaming on Sony Liv, Black, White & Gray is an investigation into four murders believed to have been committed by one young man. The story unfolds like a true-crime documentary being filmed by a faceless British freelance reporter named Daniel Gray (voiced by Edward Sonnenblick). One narrative thread shows the interviews Gray conducts with people linked to the cases. Running parallel is a series of re-enactments based on their video testimonies. In the re-enactments, we see recognisable faces and excellent performances by actors such as Tigmanshu Dhulia (who really should act more), Mayur More, Palak Jaiswal, Deven Bhojani and Anant Jog. Their pre-existing fame is a reminder of the artifice and make-believe at play. Sanjay Kumar Sahu is outstanding as the suspected serial killer, who is played by More in the re-enactments. The similarities and contrasts between the two make for a fascinating study, particularly after the final reveal. Now we enter spoiler territory. In the first episode, a politician's daughter (Jaiswal) and a driver's son (More) check into a seedy hotel. When the police raid the establishment, the couple rush to escape and the girl falls, hitting the back of her head hard enough to draw blood. The boy bundles her into their car and they leave. Soon after, he realises she is unresponsive. Two days later, just as the boy is about to be killed, the girl regains consciousness and roars into action. First, she uproots a small tree; then, she bludgeons to death the man attacking the boy. This resurrection derails the carefully constructed realism of Black, White & Gray. Until this point, the pseudo-documentary is gripping precisely because of how convincingly true-crime it is. The comatose character who miraculously recovers feels absurd against this backdrop. Rather than a lazy contrivance, however, this is a deliberate narrative choice — one that relies heavily on an assumed shared context between the audience and the storyteller: that of pulpy Bollywood excess. The rip in the fabric of believability serves to alert the viewer to the many other clichés on screen. Poor little rich girl: Check. Bad cop (complete with Rottweiler): Check. Hero as victim of circumstance: Check. Runaway couple in picturesque natural setting: Check. Golden-hearted villager: Check. Nexus between media and politics: Check. What do all these tropes do to the credibility of a confession? Does the fact that we have vintage Bollywood pulp coded into our DNA make us more susceptible? Or, does it make storytellers of us all, enabling us to spin new narratives from gaps in the plot we are given? Sadly, Mahabal's screenplay falters in a few key areas. His worldbuilding could have done with more hints to the pervasiveness of pulpy, mainstream cinema in our lives. Barring the kitschy synth-pop of the show's opening credits, there are no visual or sonic nods to mainstream Indian cinema, in the series. He also struggles to maintain the tension, and this makes the show feel overlong. Still, Black, White & Gray is more thought-provoking than the average Indian streaming show. As a foreign journalist, for instance, Gray believes his position as an outsider makes his gaze clearer. Instead, it arguably also renders him blind to the clichés in the investigation. Meanwhile, it turns out he is susceptible too. The structure of his documentary shows how he has internalised tropes of the true-crime genre, down to a hat tip to the 2015 documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, in the final reveal. Clearly, no one is immune to the influences of pop culture. With its unreliable narrators and warped storyline, Black, White & Gray allows us to glimpse just how insidiously culture can impact our perception of the world around us. (To reach Deepanjana Pal with feedback, write to @dpanjana on Instagram)
Scroll.in
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘Black White & Gray' director Pushkar Mahabal on upending true crime: ‘We have no time for nuance'
By vividly challenging the true crime project's claim to verity and certitude, Pushkar Mahabal's Black White & Gray elegantly upends the filmmaking genre. The six-episode Hindi series on Sony LIV has two parallel strands. Filmmaker Daniel Gray is pursuing a true crime documentary about a set of murders attributed to a young man. In the other strand, actors play characters associated with these killings. But like the fake found footage in the horror film The Blair Witch Project (1999), the documentary within Black, White & Gray is fiction, designed to demolish the notion of absolute truth. The series seeks to remind viewers that a sensational crime may never give up its secrets. What we see and hear could be a feint rather than fact, which makes a final judgement difficult or even impossible. The series stars Mayur More and Palak Jaiswal as characters known only as the Boy and the Girl. In the mock documentary segment, Sanjay Kumar Sahu plays the alleged killer, who pleads his innocence. Mahabal worked in television before making his first feature, the acclaimed thriller Welcome Home, in 2020. The 40-year-old filmmaker spoke to Scroll about the ideas that went into Black, White & Gray and the slippery charms of true crime. Here are edited excerpts from the interview. Black White & Gray appears to have come out of a deep interest in the true crime genre. True crime has been an obsession. I have been obsessed with the Jeffrey Dahmers and Ted Bundys of the world. I have even memorised Jeffrey Dahmer's interviews. During the coronavirus pandemic, I watched the docuseries Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer and Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. I wondered whether I had the skills to make such documentaries, since I am a fiction person. I felt, if I can't make it, let me fake it. You might be obsessed with true crime but you are not seduced by it. You are sceptical about the genre's inherent gimmickiness. As the title suggests, the show is trying to prove that there is no black and white to crime. The story of the show is as mysterious to me as it is to viewers. If it wasn't this way, it wouldn't be fun. Like the character Sneha Meshram says in one of the episodes, we tend to see people as either simplistic heroes or villains. We don't have the understanding, time or IQ to appreciate nuance. This is happening with general content too, which angers me. So I guess my frustration came out through the show. What was your writing process like? The show needed to look like the real thing, whether it's the slightly cheesy music or the visual effects. But the show needed to be serious too. The best thing I did was not to write the story first. Instead, I started writing the scenes and the dialogue. The script also had edit points – where the show would go into fiction or come back to the documentary. During the post-production, several assistants thought that the staged documentary part was real. When Sanjay Kumar Sahu came in for the dubbing, they were startled to see him. They hadn't been told that he is an actor. We kept playing along until we reached the fifth episode. The fictional story of the couple is not filmy, it is straightforward. But in the mockumentary, you don't trust anyone by the end of the season. That's the thing about unreliable narrators – you don't know who's lying or who's telling you the truth. There are two kinds of styles at work. There is the gritty documentary aesthetic, and a more fluid kind of storytelling centred on the Girl and the Boy. There is a clear distinction between the two styles. The show jumps back and forth between the two strands, so you know what you are watching. We didn't merge the two worlds at any point, otherwise it would have come off as a gimmick, a kind of false complexity. We shot the series in roughly 46 days, with a small crew. The non-fiction bits took less time to shoot. For instance, although Sanjay is in the show throughout, he shot for only two-three days. Cinematographer Saee Bhope has completely designed the different shooting styles. She shot the interviews on small cameras and degraded them to create authenticity, the way Daniel Gray would have done. There are also two different acting styles. The largely neutral performances in the mock documentary are more convincing and powerful than the parallel strand. The mock documentary portions were extremely challenging. How do you get an actor to perform in a non-actor way? An actor will give himself away, however realistic the performance. It was especially tough for Sanjay and Isha Mate, who plays Sneha. We tried out all variations of the dialogue. The most important thing was that Sanjay didn't know the script or how his character would turn out. If he knew, it would have shown in his performance. I wrote his dialogue in English. Just before the take, he would read his lines and translate them while the camera was on so that I could get the mumbles, the realistic pauses, the self-correction. The guy who plays the real Rao isn't a trained actor, so it was okay for him. Now I am getting calls about Vinod Wanikar, asking who he is, how is he so natural. Sanjay is mostly dead-eyed and unemotional, like people in true crime documentaries. Sanjay and I watched a lot of documentaries. I remember a documentary about the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai in which a cop said that his superior was shot dead before his eyes. He said this in a flat way that was still emotional and authentic. The man wasn't acting, he was trying his best not to be emotional. That's what Sanjay did too. One of the most memorable characters is the police officer Bobade – and his pet dog. Bobade is played by Chetan Mhaske, a brilliant Marathi theatre actor. There is a moment when Bobade gets angry and the dog barks. The moment doesn't look designed but it was. Why do we never see Daniel Gray's face? It adds to the realism. It's me saying that if you want to make a documentary like this in real life, you have to remain hidden. It's me being scared of exposing the main thread, which is Daniel Gray. This is also why I haven't named the characters played by Mayur More and Palak Jaiswal. It creates a sense of mystery or even confusion. I didn't want to create unnecessary conversations around class or caste or religion. The simple point is that the characters come from two groups that do not get along. As Rao says, the father's main problem is that his daughter is in love with a man she isn't allowed to be with. Viewers can project their own political readings onto the show. I have tried to represent all sides, I have tried not be biased. But yes, the show is political. All content is political. Even romantic films are political. How did you get into filmmaking? I am from Nagpur. I am a trained Hindustani classical music vocalist. I came to Mumbai in 2006 to become a music director. I did a few projects, including a couple of Marathi films. In 2011, I made a short film out of curiosity with my writer and actor friends. Somehow, the trailer reached Ram Gopal Varma. I was over the moon since I am a huge Ram Gopal Varma fan. He was very impressed to know that I had learnt filmmaking through YouTube. We made a film together in 2011, a thriller called Jungle 2, which was completed but never released. I wanted to continue as a director. I worked in television for six years. I was earning well. But one day, I was hanging out with my old friends from Nagpur, Saee Bhope and Ankita Narang. We were ranting that nobody appreciated our talent. Then we thought, why not make something on our own? Welcome Home was a trust-based film. We called up all our friends and said, let's make something, never mind whether it sells or not. Producers Hemal Thakkar and Paresh Rawal saw it, Sony LIV saw it, and they liked it. I am very relaxed when Saee and Ankita are on the sets. Since we wanted to do something else with Sony LIV, I wrote Black White & Gray. Saee shot the show, as she did Welcome Home, and Ankita, who wrote and produced Welcome Home, is the creative producer on the show. How have viewers reacted to Black White & Gray? Filmmakers have been asking me how I pulled off such an experimental show in a corporate set-up. On that front, I have had a very good experience with the people at Sony LIV. They didn't interfere and let me do my thing. We had pre-written the show when we pitched it to Sony LIV. Such a complex narrative can't be pitched as an idea. You need to have episodes ready so that you can explain the treatment, otherwise it can be confusing. I couldn't even explain the show to my father. I told him to watch the episodes instead. Mounting a show like this is tiring since there is no template, no reference, but it's hugely enjoyable too. Play
