Kaizad Gustad: Lost and Found

A creative from the web series, Lost and Found starring Faraz Khan and Poppy Jabal and directed by Kaizad Gustad

We remember Kaizad Gustad as the writer-director whose first feature film was Bombay Boys - a scandalous story of three expat boys "finding themselves" to the tune of numbers by Indus Creed. It stereotyped locals in a way that only an NRI can and had a heavy dose of homosexuality. Some found it offensive, others thought it was progressive. If you were a 90s kid, however, chances are you watched it on the sly.

A creative from the web series, Lost and Found starring Faraz Khan and Poppy Jabal and directed by Kaizad Gustad

But, here's a little known fact. Gustad's first feature was shot on 1,00,000 feet of 35 mm Kodak film - a prize he won for best short film in Asia at the Kodak Awards in 1995, three years before Bombay Boys. Decades after that win and a couple of career setbacks later, Gustad - Parsi boy, Mumbai-schooled, Sydney-bred and now 46 - has debuted as the writer-director of a web series that shares the same title as that short - Lost and Found. The similarities stop there, however. The new web series, which released last week and is serialised for six weeks on SONYLiv.com, follows a rather familiar formula of polar opposites - an introverted geek and a gregarious Punjabi kudi. Jai Veer Rathod (Faraz Khan, of Ship of Theseus fame) loses his phone, which lands in the hands of Preeti (Poppy Jabal) and a chase ensues. "It's a road movie, a love trip gone mad. Jai chases after the phone, only to find her, and in the process, himself," Gustad writes to us.

Kaizad Gustad

Lost and Found has the Gustad trademark - scenes of Bombayana, unusual plot twists and some easy laughs. "I always write my own films and it appeals to me to make original and ‘hatke' stuff. Bombay Boys and Lost and Found - both are urban stories. I like that milieu, and every story from me offers lots of twists and turns. And usually the girl comes out on top," says the filmmaker, who gave us Boom (which launched Katrina Kaif) and Jackpot (featuring Sunny Leone).

For Gustad, film has gone digital and his world has changed. He recalls the first film he saw - in a cinema built by his grandfather in an open field in Karnataka. "The screen came out of the field and everyone sat on the earth and watched the show, one day a week. Formats will come and go, but the core remains the same - entertain me!" he says.

Thus, making Lost and Found is "quite possibly the hardest thing" that Gustad has ever done. It was his first in-house production with his company Adda Media and shot in 12 days straight with a small crew and cast. And, the last couple of decades haven't been the most favourable either to Gustad - the death of Nadia Khan, a crew member, in 2004 on his sets was followed by a six-year-long trial and he served jail time for a month. While he has in the past spoken of major career setbacks caused by the incident, it looks like he is ready to move on, in life and with his film formats. "I've been a part of the film industry for almost 20 years now, never been cut off from it. As a filmmaker, it takes forever to mount a film. I think every filmmaker will tell you that. Digital just means that you can tell your stories quickly and without the usual fuss over cinema. But yes, with the internet, and with digital in particular, the rules have changed," he says, adding that his first novel, Seven Storeys, releases this year as he works on Auto Bhagwan, a feature film. "So it's been a very busy year - a web series, a feature, a novel and a play."

In all of this, Gustad hasn't forgotten his first. "In many ways, Bombay Boys was a digital movie, ahead of its time. It should have come out now."