Trapped (2017)

Interesting facts

Trapped is a 2016 Indian Hindi-language survival drama film directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, who also co-produced it with Anurag Kashyap, Vikas Bahl and Madhu Mantena under the banner of Phantom Films. The film stars Rajkummar Rao as a call centre employee who gets trapped in his apartment room without food, water, and electricity, and Geetanjali Thapa as his girlfriend.

Production

Trapped originated from the first-time screenwriter Amit Joshi, who had left his job in a telecommunications company to write full-time. He says the idea for the film came to him from "a desire to write something that wasn't buried in layers". Joshi found the situation for the film when he was auto-locked inside his flat for half an hour in Goregaon, Mumbai.

After discussing the film with Rajkummar Rao, Motwane cast him, believing he had an "interesting vulnerability" and a "never-say-die attitude". The crew was already in place, and they only needed to find the right location for the film. Motwane initially wanted a location that was on the outskirts of Mumbai, as he wanted to see the city from a distance and yet "feel you are away from it".

Motwane has a fear of mice, and as a result, had characters of mice in the film which he felt was a "good opportunity" to get over his fear. He expressed that the survival drama genre in Indian cinema was still in a nascent stage and felt the film is along the lines of Cast Away (2000), 127 Hours (2010) and Buried (2010).

The film was shot in chronological order in twenty days. It is Motwane's first film shot in digital video format. He also decided to not go for a widescreen aspect ratio and rather opted for a more compressed look because of the nature of the film, as he wanted to create a claustrophobic feel. Because of the film's genre, Motwane made sure that it was fast-paced so that the audience would not get bored.

Rao found the role of Shaurya to be one of his most challenging works to date. He had to lose weight and remained on a carrot and coffee diet throughout the course of filming, as he wanted to accurately depict the character eating improper food during the time he is stuck inside the apartment. Despite being a vegan, Rao ate meat in some of the scenes for the first time in his life, as Motwane preferred it to be realistic.

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