Priyanshu Modi on The Pill

When Priyanshu Modi talks about ‘The Pill’, he doesn’t begin with cinematic jargon or the technicalities of filmmaking. He begins with a feeling. “Art comes from emotions,” he says simply. “And that is the only way it should be made.” It’s this belief — that honesty fuels greatness — that sparked the first seed of his new film, where a musician’s brilliance and self-destruction collide.Priyanshu had been watching the increasing reliance on AI in creative spaces. He doesn’t villainize it; he even acknowledges its usefulness. “As long as you take its help, it’s still justifiable,” he says. But he draws a line at full delegation. “Once you totally delegate all of your filmmaking processes to an AI… it cannot be art because it comes primarily from emotions.” That tension — between human feeling and machine-generated perfection — became the invisible spine of The Pill. “AI doesn’t directly come out in the film,” he admits. “But it’s very layered art. Anybody who watches the film and gives it some time will understand the core message — that art comes from emotions.”The story’s central character takes a pill that suppresses emotions, an extreme but metaphorically sharp device. Everything else, he says, “is totally driven out of my own feelings.” The protagonist — constantly distracted, constantly wrestling with himself — is, in Priyanshu’s words, “literally just me.” He laughs about how even the smallest inconvenience can throw him off. The idea of compartmentalizing distractions, of wishing he could set them aside to create better — that came directly from his own process. “As long as I stayed true to that,” he says, “I knew the story would get to a point where it feels amazing.”Moving from two-minute reels to a 30-minute film might seem daunting, but Priyanshu found the shift surprisingly smooth. “Reels have always been my film school,” he says. Those years of run-and-gun filmmaking taught him to work fast, adapt faster, and trust his instincts — skills vital on a self-produced film with a ten-member crew. “Those four days I did not feel stressed once,” he smiles. “All that confidence comes from making reels.”But reels also bring the weight of virality — the numbers, the pressure, the validation loop. Priyanshu grounds himself by staying connected to his ‘why’. “As long as you remember why you started doing something,” he says, “you don’t get distracted by validation.” Authenticity, for him, is not a style; it’s a discipline.Writing emotionally intense characters can be draining, but Priyanshu has built a rhythm over 12–13 years of writing. “It’s become my muscle memory,” he explains. Understanding a character’s motivations is part of the art; executing it on the page is craft. “When I sit to write, the writer in me just has to do his job.” He avoids getting too lost in the character, or too detached, by relying on fundamentals. “As long as you stick to your basics, the risk dies down.”His answers in the rapid-fire round reveal unexpected softness beneath his intensity. The emotion he writes from the most? “Hope,” he says without hesitation. “The moment you start being hopeless as an artist, you stop telling stories that should matter.”A film that changed his life? Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite’. “It was so universal at its core,” he says, still visibly moved by it. The same goes for ‘Rang De Basanti’, which he believes struck the perfect balance between commercial success and important storytelling. That balance, he says, is the hardest part of being a storyteller today. “You have a responsibility to tell stories nobody else is telling. But you also need commercial success to stay relevant.”Asked about characters he dreams of writing, his answer is immediate: Jordan from ‘Rockstar’ and Kundan from ‘Raanjhanaa’. “I am just as obsessed with my art as Jordan was and just as hopeless with emotions as Kundan,” he admits.Stories follow Priyanshu everywhere. A recent moment in Mumbai — sitting with a friend, realizing how both their separate lives two years ago had somehow led them to that exact conversation — lingered with him. “Everything is a story,” he says thoughtfully. “Everything is a turning point.”As for how his friends would describe him? He grins. “Unresponsive — because when I am writing, I vanish.” But also ‘reliable’ and ‘spontaneous,’ because he never says no to plans. “Stories are everywhere and the selfish writer in me is always looking for them,” he says.His cinematic inspirations stretch far beyond India — from Iranian masters like Kiarostami and Farhadi to Hong Kong legend Wong Kar-wai, whose ultra-wide-lens innovations taught him that “limitations are the driving factor for invention.”Before he signs off, he recites the line that stayed with him longer than he expected — feels like it sums up both him and ‘The Pill’: “Dreams are all we have.”



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