On Ship of Theseus’s 7 year anniversary Anand Gandhi releases an intriguing poster of his next, Emergence

Filmmaker Anand Gandhi has been enthralling the critics as well the audience with his prolific version of cinema directing award-winning films like Tumbbad, Ship of Theseus, An Insignificant Man and many more. The director has a celebration on cards for him as his one of his most popular film’s Ship of Theseus clocks in 7 years. Right from its release Ship of Theseus has gotten Anand lots of appreciation from various fronts, be it fans, movie enthusiast or critics everyone had many good things to say about this spectacle Anand brought to the big screen. In fact, many renowned critics called the film as ‘one of the most significant films to have ever come out of India’.
Not just the praises, but the list of awards this film won has also been long. Ship Of Theseus has won the Sutherland Trophy (annual award created by BFI), Transilvania International Film Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival, 61st National Film Awards and many more. And while this film has made Anand Gandhi a role model for many aspiring filmmakers, the film’s fan clubs have also never held back from paying a tribute to the film every now and then.
And on this very special occasion Anand chose to release an intriguing poster of his most talked about upcoming project, Emergence. While it is based on the current times, it sheds some light on life in the post-pandemic world. Talking about the project, Anand says, “In Ship of Theseus, the character Charvaka says – The fungus enters an ant’s body through its respiration. It invades it’s brain and changes how it perceives smell, because ants do everything they do from their smell of pheromones, right? So this microscopic little fungal spore then makes the ant climb up the stem of a plant and bite hard on a leaf, with an abnormal force. The fungus then kills the ant, and continues to grow, leaving the ant’s exoskeleton intact. So, a small fungus drives an ant around as a vehicle, uses it as food and shelter and then as the ultimate monument to itself. And when the fungus is ready to reproduce, its fruiting bodies grow from the ant’s head and rupture, releasing the spores, letting the wind carry them to more unsuspecting food.

There. Our entire idea of free will down the bin. One single small fungus spore does that to an ant. You have trillions of bacteria in your body. How do you know where you end, and where your environment begins. With this idea as the central question, I started writing Emergence in 2015. After 5 years of intensive research and writing, the project is now ready for production. It’s the ultimate distillation of all my life’s epiphanies and insights.”