Documenting the dreams and struggles of a Tiktoker

Explore the dreams & struggles of a young TikTok star in Divya Kharnare's "15 Seconds A Lifetime", screening Dec 27.

Divya Kharnare’s ‘15 Seconds A Lifetime’, which will be screened on December 27, documents the dreams and struggles of a young Tiktoker

YouTube and TikTok videos are the new-age virtual platforms that keeps millennials and gen-Z hooked to their screens. The number of uploads and content created prove that there is no dearth of talent . Ever wondered what goes into the making of these shorts? Do they put in hours of back-end work into making these 15-second films? That is exactly what 22-year-old Divya Kharnare’s film, 15 Seconds A Lifetime setsout to find out.

Written and directed by Divya, the film is a result of his two-year research and documentation. The film follows the journey of a young Mumbai-based boy, Mayur Natekar, who is obsessed with making his dreams come true with TikTok. “He dreams of not only monetary benefits from the platform, but also to use it as a springboard to realise his acting ambition. Mayur is not alone in this journey, and finds ample encouragement from his parents and younger brother, who not only wish to see Mayur make it big in the world of films, but also look at TikTok as a means to overcome their financial burdens,” says Divya over a call from FTII Pune, where he is studying filmmaking.

Divya quit his job as a Director & Content Creator at BhaDiPa (a regional YouTube Channel) to make films. He says there were three reasons to make 15 Seconds... “I was working with BhaDiPa creating short content for them, yet wanted to explore and challenge myself to see if I had the perseverance and patience to make a film. The other reason was the research. Before 2019, TikTok was huge in India. When it was banned in India, the 200 million plus users who were using the app here, went crazy. That triggered my thinking as to what it is about TikTok that people are so addicted to. I started watching the app and discovered that 80% of viewers in India come from two and three-tier cities with a monthly income below 25K.”

“These aspects intrigued me and I wanted to explore if art and privilege were connected in any way. Through this film, I wanted to understand what they perceived as art and why these 15 seconds of fame were so important to them,” says the director, who is one of the winners of the ‘75 Creative Minds of Tomorrow’ Award at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2021.

Encouraged, Divya made 15 Seconds A Lifetime, which has been screened in Moscow, Melbourne, Mexico and at the New York Indian Film Festival 2022.

“It is easy to judge tiktok-ers as ‘crazy’ but the film goes beyond the screen. What is the definition of art for them and why do they even change their hair colour and personality to make their videos? The other challenge was to not make it an academic research kind of a film, but more a human interest story about a boy who dreams of making it big and the hurdles he goes through.”