Subuhi Jiwani

Subuhi Jiwani is a writer, editor and a director of documentaries. She also has over ten years of experience in creating content for the web, television and print. Through this grant, she attempts to explore the dating phenomenon using apps in urban India.

Subuhi intends to create a five to ten-minute film on the experience of women and men on dating apps in urban India tentatively titled No Right Swipes for Love. Drawing from her own personal experiences as a 40-year-old and that of her friend in their 20s, Subuhi will explore how people engage with dating apps. Her enquiries include what men and women are searching for and finding on dating apps and whether they are looking for intimacy and companionship in the wrong places. Her central enquiry rests on whether we have reached a point in human civilisation where we have to market ourselves in order to find intimacy, and whether digital devices have made us lonelier than ever before. The film will also touch upon how the lockdown and the pandemic have affected experiences of app dating.

In order to address these questions and understand the online dating landscape, she will interview around eight to 10 women and men in different Indian cities. Based on these interviews, online research and drawing from her own experiences, Subuhi will develop the script for the film. She will weave together narratives of four protagonists – two women and two men - and these stories will be told through voice-overs in addition to texts and screen-based chats, voice calls, profile photos and video calls, with limited live-action.

The outcome and deliverable of the grant will the film.

This grant is made possible under the special initiative 25x25, with support from lead donor Kshirsagar-Apte Foundation, and philanthropy partners, Titan Company Limited, Priya Paul, and Sethu Vaidyanathan.