Recyclewala Story Search 2015 ends with an overwhelming response!

The idea behind this initiative according to Sohum Shah, Founder, Recyclewala Films - "Original story is where the making of an original film starts from. We want to reach out and start a dialogue to find them and recognize original voices from all corners of India."

The campaign witnessed an overwhelming response as entries came in huge numbers from the interior parts of the country. Recyclewala's initiative proved to be the ideal place where writers sent in their penned thoughts/stories/scripts thereby curbing their inner inhibitions and exploring their thought process. The Recyclewala team was surprised to witnessed a large number of stories on homosexual relationships addressed by residents of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir. While same sex romance is still a taboo in metro cities, people in smaller towns had penned their thoughts on the subject rather beautifully.

Recyclewala's knack for defying conventional wisdom is apparent with their last film Ship of Theseus won a national-award and a few other popular awards. Internationally acclaimed, the film was made with new actors, used liberal amounts of English and is considered to be a highly original film in Indian cinema. Kiran Rao came on board to present the film watching an early screening and UTV became the distributor. The film has since built a cult following and is also known for its novel marketing plan which asked the audience to vote to watch the film in theaters in their cities, a novel plan that worked! The film ran for 6 weeks in theaters, something that indie films typically struggle with. 

Sohum's idea was to ask for submissions via the internet and then to set up an internal team to sift through the deluge of entries that came through. The use of digital medium for submission led to broaden the reach of the story search to remote areas of the country.In fact, the Recyclewala Story Search 2015 found such massive response that the deadline had to be extended by a week from the original deadline of 14 November and these entries poured in from over 150 cities. The campaign proved to be highly productive as towards the end thousands of entries had been submitted.  In the due course of the campaign, Sohum visited educational institutions in Mumbai, Jaipur, Benaras, Aligarh and Delhi where he interacted with students thereby adding a personal touch to the otherwise internet led campaign.