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LOEV
Written and Directed by Sudhanshu Saria
Producers: Four Line + Bombay Berlin Film Productions
Starring: Shiv Pandit, Dhruv Ganesh, Sidharth Menon
92 minutes, Drama, 2017
Synopsis | Trailer | Festival Selections | Key Press | Making Of
Loev's script was written by Sudhanshu in the United States, when he was working on the screenplay of another film, I Am Here and drew heavily from his personal experiences. He says that the screenplay was written out of "deep shame and fear" and on completion was not pitched to any investors, but instead put away into a drawer. He believed that no investors or actors would want to be associated with a film that he thought would be censored or banned in its home country.
In February 2014, Katharina Suckale, Arfi Lamba and Jasleen Marwah of the Bombay Berlin Film Production showed interest in adapting the script into a full-length feature film despite Sudhanshu's own doubts on its viability.
Principal photography began in the summer of 2014 and took place entirely in Mumbai and Mahabaleshwar, a small hilltown in the Western Ghats. Loev was filmed in a single schedule in a short span of 16 days. In an interview, Arfi talked about the struggle of funding the project saying that the investors backed out at the last-minute at more than one occasion. The film's crew members financed the project from their own salaries to meet the cost of production. "We had to plan well, be extremely frugal, count every penny and make sure it all ended up on the screen", said Sudhanshu.
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The Supreme Court of India's December 2013 decision to reinstate Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalised same-sex relationships in India had a major bearing on Sudhanshu's work. The filming was done discreetly as he feared opposition from the local community towards the film's underlying subject of homosexuality. Among the crew members, only a core group were aware of the details of the plot, and to the rest of the crew it was a road trip film, one identical to Dil Chahta Hai.
The entire editing and sound mixing process was completed after four months of post-production work. With a total runtime of 92 minutes, the film was pitched under the labels of Bombay Berlin Film Productions and Four Line Films. The worldwide rights of the film were acquired by Netflix in April 2017.
LOEV is a deliberate misspelling of the word "love". "No matter how different love may look like compared to convention, it is still love. No matter how it is spelt, it is still love."