He`s one of my favourite filmmakers,” insists Ananya Panday, alluding to director Vikramaditya Motwane when we ask her about what drew her to CTRL, their new film that will premiere on Netflix on October 4. Panday counts Jubilee, Motwane’s tribute to the Hindi film industry of the 1940s and 1950s, the self-reflexive AK vs AK and Udaan among her favourites. “Udaan is my mom’s [Bhavana Pandey’s] favourite film and we used to watch it a lot when I was growing up. I must have seen it close to 20 times with her.”

The other reason for being part of CTRL was Screenlife, a form of visual storytelling in which events are shown entirely on a computer, tablet or smartphone screen. “Eighty-ninety per cent of the story [of CTRL] takes place on a computer screen and all the storytelling is through mediums that we use on our computers, like searches, video calls or Instagram—things we spend a lot of our time on,” Motwane shares.