Set in a summer season residence in Yorkshire, it’s the story of 1 night time that spirals uncontrolled after two {couples} collect for dinner and the host jokes a couple of lifeless physique in a trunk. Laced with darkish humour and lit up by Rasika Duggal, Arjun Mathur, Paresh Pahuja, and Zoha Rahman, it combines Hitchcockian suspense and thriller with colonial historical past and social commentary in a satirical and quirky manner. The film hits the screens on October 10, 2025.
Having assisted a various vary of filmmakers, together with Dibakar and Gauri Shinde, in addition to Ram Madhavani and Subhash Ghai, Anshuman says the inspiration for the film got here from the German play Mr. Kolpert, which he offered on the Thespo Theatre Festival in 2005. “The suspenseful story and its darkish humour stayed with me, after which I’m an enormous fan of Hitchcock’s Rope. I realised, in India, we now have stopped making chamber movies. Trapped is the final movie that I bear in mind.”
Anshuman took the thought to Bikas Mishra, who directed him within the a lot feted Chauranga. “After the second draft, I informed Bikash that it needed to be shot with a single lens. At some level, I felt that I might solely hearken to Beethoven whereas studying it.”
Soon, Bikash steered that I direct it. “Otherwise, he felt I might ghost direct it,” laughs Anshuman, sharing technical particulars like how the color scheme will get darker with every act and the one lens will get nearer to the characters as the stress mounts.
Unsure concerning the funding, he pitched the story on the South Asian Film Market in Singapore, and Vistas Media Acquisition Company picked it up. However, COVID slowed the method for the slow-burn to fructify. However, Anshuman says, the market’s curiosity didn’t wane.
The solid and crew of ‘Lord Curzon Ki Haveli’, directed by Anshuman Jha. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Recently, the American rights to the movie have been purchased by Buffalo8. Anshuman believes within the dictum that budgets fail, movies don’t. “Having good academics in life taught me that should you stay the particular person you’re, then you definately begin doing what you like, and then you definately begin having what you want. For any artist and a superb human being, that’s the course of. The downside with our movie trade is that they’ve what they need, not what they want.”
Beneath the duvet of the style, the movie talks of id and the insecurity of immigrants in a international land. Anshuman underlines that from LSD to Lakadbaggha, he persistently picked style movies with social undertones. ‘I do know cinema can’t change society, however it may spark conversations. The course of led me to create a black comedy thriller with layers, as Bikas envisioned within the screenplay. When I meet a few of my associates from the UK, I discover them not sure of their id. When they’re in India, their faux British accent flattens. I’m married to an American. In India, Sierra is seen as an expat, however within the US, I’m seen as an immigrant. I’m an observer of life and have tried to weave these parts.”
The concern of Asian squatters is a recurring downside within the UK, significantly in the summertime properties, he says. “Add to it the impression that Bonnie & Clyde and Natural Born Killers created on me throughout my faculty years, and I let my creativeness work on the thought of id and insecurity.”
The title, he says, attracts from Viceroy Lord Curzon to mirror on the atrocities dedicated in opposition to Indians throughout his rule. “The British are fairly squeamish about their historical past. I used to be not sure how the native viewers would react to our movie on the British Asian Film Festival, the place it was the closing movie. However, an amazing response made me marvel if a lot of this black and white, you and me, is drilled into our heads that we now have stopped one another as people. Cinema has the ability to bridge this divide.”
Anshuman will proceed to carry the director’s baton in Lakadbaggha 2: The Monkey Business, which is predicted to hit the screens within the first half of 2026. Shot in Indonesia, he guarantees the most important hand-to-hand fight movie rooted in India.
“Taking ahead the adventures of animal-loving vigilante Arjun Bakshi, the thought is to make a world spectacle round an endangered species of monkeys, the place I can be joined by Sunny Pang and Dang Chupon, who will carry their experience in martial arts.”
The success of the Lakadbaggha franchise in each film and comedian kind sparked a dialog across the safety of stray canines. With the animals within the information once more, Anshuman says one ought to give coexistence an opportunity earlier than throwing them out. “If my maths serves me proper, if we vaccinate them, we might spend one-tenth of the price required for constructing shelters.”
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