Prateek Kuhad, the Indian singer-songwriter known for hits including “Cold/Mess” and “Kasoor,” will make his feature film acting debut in “Drowning” (“Doobna” in Hindi/Urdu), Marginal MediaWorks has revealed.
Directed by Dar Gai and shot on location in New Delhi, the film marks Marginal’s first fiction feature produced in South Asia, in partnership with Los Angeles-based label D36 and Mumbai-based Jugaad Motion Pictures.
Kuhad plays Tarush, an indie musician in Delhi who lands one breakout hit and then can’t escape the grip of a criminal record label boss. Marginal founder and CEO Sanjay M. Sharma is producing with the company’s head of film, Milan Chakraborty, D36 co-founder and CEO Abhi Kanakadandila, and Jugaad co-founders Dheer Momaya and Gai, from a story the group developed jointly.
“The film is like if the Safdie brothers mixed John Carney’s ‘Once’ and Lars von Trier’s ‘Dancer in the Dark’ in the blender that is the contemporary music scene in Delhi,” Sharma said.
For Kuhad, the project grew out of an earlier collaboration with Gai, who directed the video for his song “Cold/Mess.” “Ever since Dar directed the video for ‘Cold/Mess’ I hoped we would find more ways to work together,” Kuhad said. “So when Abhi and Sanjay brought the idea for a film inspired by my song ‘Drown,’ I was immediately intrigued.”
Kuhad’s “Cold/Mess” reached No. 1 on Spotify India and was featured on former U.S. President Barack Obama’s year-end playlist; the Gai-directed video was later named Rolling Stone’s Music Video of the Year. His third album, “Full Moon Chamber,” arrived July 10 via Atlantic Records, following a run of sold-out headline tours across North America, Europe, the U.K., Asia and the Middle East. He is repped by CAA and Big Bad Wolf India, with Everyday Rebellion handling worldwide management.
Gai’s credits include “Three and a Half,” which streams on Netflix worldwide after a stellar festival run; her second film, “Namdev Bhau: In Search of Silence,” played at Busan, BFI London and Palm Springs. Jugaad’s “Last Film Show” was shortlisted for the international feature Oscar. “With Doobna, I wanted to make a film that feels like life right now: real, funny, tragic, chaotic, and impossible to escape, impossible to press a reset button,” said Gai, a Ukrainian native long based in Mumbai.
Kanakadandila, whose D36 roster spans South Asian-descent artists in the U.S., U.K., India and Pakistan, framed the film as a response to a gap he sees in how the region’s music culture reaches screen. “India has a singular relationship between music and cinema, but there’s a fundamental mismatch between the spirit of the contemporary scene and the format of traditional Bollywood,” he said.
The film is the anchor of a South Asia-focused push within Marginal’s broader international slate, which also includes projects in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Europe and Canada. “This is a trillion dollar market, two billion people, more English speakers than the United States itself, and the fastest growing, digitally connected, and largest youth population in the world,” Sharma said. “Just as we’ve seen Korean culture, food, fashion, music and cinema resonate around the world, a similar wave is coming from South Asia.”
Marginal has produced more than a dozen features in just over five years, including Tribeca 2025 Audience Award runner-up “The Rose: Come Back to Me,” Tribeca Jury Prize winner “Cypher,” and the recently released horror title “Camp.”
