The 23-year-old Mumbai-born writer, director and producer Shlok Choudhari made his first film, 3:30, at the age of 22, without any formal film education. The psychological thriller explores trauma, psychiatric misdiagnosis, and the idea of healing. Choudhari says the story was inspired by two real experiences he witnessed.
We spoke with him about the making of his debut film 3:30, his approach to cinema, the process of bringing the film to life independently, and the films he hopes to make next.
For those who are meeting you for the first time, who is Shlok Choudhari? Could you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
I’m a 23-year-old writer, director and producer from Mumbai. I didn’t go to film school, and I didn’t really attend college much either, except when there was a movie screening. I’m a student of the arts, but not within any institution. I learn through literature, cinema, observation, and simply making things. I made 3:30 when I was 22. It’s my first film. I built the entire production largely through cold outreach – pitching strangers on LinkedIn until some of those strangers became friends, friends who believed in the story. I didn’t have industry connections or institutional backing. I don’t really have a safety net. I think, mentally, where I come from is pretty simple: a set of big balls and a broken heart. That’s probably what has carried me this far.
How did you first get interested in filmmaking? Was becoming a filmmaker always something you wanted to do?
I grew up watching movies and loving movies. I’m a big movie buff. I watch movies every day, and it is a part of my routine. I’ve always loved storytelling as well. I think I’ve always had this need to express myself, and eventually I realised, what better way to do that than through movies? For me, it became a convergence of two things: my fascination with cinema and my instinct for storytelling. I became interested not just in watching films, but in understanding their visual language — how composition, light, movement, sound, performance and editing can play a role in communicating an idea. That developed my visual literacy and changed the way I looked at the world. If storytelling is one of the ways I make sense of the world, filmmaking felt like the most complete way to express it.
This is your directorial debut. What made you decide that 3:30 should be the story you told as your first film?
Because I had to tell it. It felt like the Muses were sitting on my shoulders, pushing me to express something I couldn’t put into words any other way. 3:30 stems from two real experiences involving people I loved. A woman I loved was being quietly destroyed by the wrong psychiatric medication. A nine-year-old girl I knew was sexually assaulted by a man who looked, to everyone around him, completely ordinary. I made 3:30 because I had no other way to honor what I had witnessed.
Could you tell us a little about 3:30 without giving too much away? What can audiences expect from the film?
At 3:30 AM on the Gothic streets of Mumbai, a woman moves through the city gripping a vial of medication, pursued by a presence that blurs the line between memory and reality. The film is seven minutes and eleven seconds, shot in high-contrast black and white. At its core, 3:30 is a tragedy in the Greek sense — when your greatest asset is turned against you. In this case, the very thing meant to heal her becomes the thing that destroys her.
The film deals with some very difficult subjects, particularly trauma and psychiatric misdiagnosis. What made you want to explore these subjects through a psychological thriller?
Because 3:30 deals with trauma, sexual assault, misdiagnosis and questioning authority — subjects that are fundamentally psychological and deeply unsettling. Horror and the psychological thriller felt like the most honest genres to explore them through. And if 3:30 had to be made in 2026, I kept asking myself: what visual language could honestly hold these subjects? That brought me back to German Expressionism and film noir. German Expressionism emerged from a period of enormous social and psychological turmoil, and filmmakers used distorted spaces, shadows, lighting and mise-en-scène to externalise the inner state of their characters. Films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari created worlds that were recognisably real, but psychologically distorted. That idea felt incredibly relevant to 3:30. I didn’t want to create a supernatural world or break the laws of physics. I wanted the real world to feel slightly wrong — to have the environment itself begin to reflect what is happening inside the Woman. Mumbai, particularly the Gothic architecture of Colaba, gave us that canvas. At 3 AM, the broken structures, shadows, arches and empty streets already have an almost expressionist quality. And film noir gave me the other half of the language — the idea of a character gradually losing control and being pulled deeper into a situation they can’t escape. So, in a way, going back to Expressionism and noir felt like the most contemporary choice I could make for a story about psychological trauma in 2026.
The film seems to question what “healing” really means. Do you think we sometimes try to simplify trauma and recovery into something that can be easily understood or fixed?
Absolutely. We live in an era of Instagram healing and what I sometimes think of as Insta University — morning routines, manifestations, vision boards, ten steps to recovery, everyone suddenly becoming an expert on trauma and mental health. We’ve taken something as complex as trauma and turned it into something that can be packaged, simplified and consumed. 3:30 is about a woman who believed she was healing. She trusted the system. She took the medication. She followed the protocol. And it destroyed her. I’m not saying people should stop seeking psychiatric help. Quite the opposite. I think we need to seek the right help, but also remain aware of the system we’re placing our trust in, and be willing to question it when something doesn’t feel right. As Einstein said, “Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
You’ve described the story as coming from two wounds that were not yours, but somehow stayed with you. What does it mean to you to tell a story about pain that you didn’t personally experience?
It means carrying it with the utmost responsibility. Sure, I wasn’t misdiagnosed, and these weren’t my wounds, but I’ve been wrong about things in my own life. I’ve believed things that turned out to be false. I’ve made mistakes in judgment. Haven’t we all? These were people I loved, people very close to me, and I had to watch them go through these experiences. So while the pain wasn’t mine, it stayed with me deeply. I felt a responsibility to tell the story without appropriating their pain — to stay as close as I could to what I witnessed and tell it honestly. I wasn’t telling my own story. I was trying to honour theirs.
You had no industry contacts when you started working on the film and eventually reached out to people through LinkedIn. How did you actually put the team together?
I told the industry what my debut film would be about, and the response was almost unanimous: unethical, too bold, make something safer. I had zero industry contacts. So I went on LinkedIn. I cold-pitched strangers. Hundreds of messages. Most went unanswered. Some said no. A few said yes. Sunil Sadarangani, a Mumbai-born, LA-based producer who grew up in the very streets of Colaba where we shot the film, came on board as producer. Jimmy Velarde, a 12-time Emmy Award-winning veteran of CBS Television Network, read the treatment and joined as Executive Producer. Betty Butler and Paul Byrne also came on board and believed in the film from the beginning, and I’m deeply grateful to both of them. Then there were the people who gave the film its identity — Nishant Kurada, whose beautiful black-and-white cinematography created the visual world of 3:30; Siddharth, whose sound design created an entirely new world around the film; and Priyanka Zemse, who became the heart of it as our lead. Along the way, we brought together some wonderful producers, cast, crew and creative collaborators. What started as cold outreach slowly became a group of people who believed in the story. Some of those strangers became friends, and those friends became collaborators. Nobody was there because of who they knew. They were there because they believed in what we were making.
You shot the film in Colaba at around 3 AM, during the monsoon, and even had some encounters with the police. What was that experience like?
Chaotic. Beautiful. Terrifying. Colaba is a particularly sensitive area, especially because of the history of the 26/11 attacks. We faced a lot of trouble with the police at almost every location we shot at. They were constantly questioning us, asking what we were doing there, why we were filming, and whether we had permissions. So we had to be very careful and, at times, find ways to make them look the other way long enough for us to get the shot. The rain came when it wanted. The police came when they wanted. We had a small crew and a story that had to be told. And somehow, you find the film inside the chaos, not despite it. There were moments at 3 AM when the city felt like it was collaborating with us — the rain, the wet glimmering streets, the empty Victorian archways. And there were moments when everything fell apart and we had to find another way. That’s filmmaking.
You were the writer, director and producer of the film. What was the biggest challenge of wearing all three hats on your first film?
Knowing which one to take off. The writer’s ego has to go the moment the director steps onto set. The director’s ego has to go when the producer needs to make a hard call. Each role demands a different mindset, and the hardest part is knowing when to switch between them. Especially on your first film, you’re still figuring out who you are in each role. I’m still learning. But I think the most important thing I can bring to a set is sincerity. Not technique. Not references. Not a mood board. Sincerity can’t be faked.
Now that 3:30 has started its festival journey, what are you hoping comes next for the film — and for you as a filmmaker?
I’m currently developing a surreal short film that explores possession, identity and the dissolution of the self. And then my debut feature — a neo-realist tragic love story rooted in deeply personal source material. The kind of story you carry for years before you know how to tell it. The surreal short is the spiritual predecessor. The feature is the spiritual sequel. Both very different from 3:30 — but like 3:30, they come from somewhere real. That’s the only place I know how to start.
