With his fictional series First Copy, director Farhan Zamma says he wants to spotlight how piracy has hampered Indian cinema’s growth
(From left) Munawar Faruqui and Saqib Ayub in First Copy. Pics/Instagram
Piracy has morphed into something far more dangerous than bootleg DVDs. In his latest series First Copy that is set in the 1990s, director Farhan Zamma dives into this shadowy world as he tells the story of Arif, an unemployed youngster who is lured by the quick money of film piracy. “Growing up in the 1990s, I saw how DVD piracy became an affordable, accessible form of entertainment that families consumed together. What struck me later was that while the industry has explored major scams of Harshad Mehta, Nirav Modi, and [Abdul Karim] Telgi, we’ve never told the story of piracy. It impacted the growth of Indian cinema, yet it was never addressed on screen,” says the director.
Zamma has told stories across formats, from web series Taj: Divided By Blood and Happily Ever After (2020) to documentaries, including Heritage Trails One District One Product (2021). Those past experiences helped him shape the Amazon MX Player series. The director shares that while his love for research-driven storytelling fuelled First Copy’s script, the protagonist came to life only when he saw Munawar Faruqui. “The story lacked a central character. That changed when I watched Munawar’s Dongri Ka Rider. The moment I saw it, I knew we had found our Arif. There were questions about whether he could act, but we were confident in our choice.”
His research of 13 months took him through the wildest true stories. “The stories revealed the scale of the issue. This wasn’t just petty theft; it was an
organised system,” asserts the director.
Piracy continues to plague Indian cinema even today. Last month, news emerged that as per an audit commissioned by Sikandar’s makers, the Salman Khan-starrer had suffered losses of about R91 crore due to piracy. Mention this to Zamma, and he says, “We are making a show about piracy in an age where content is pirated before the credits roll. First Copy doesn’t glorify piracy. We’re holding up the mirror to a system that remains broken; the tools may have changed, but the problem hasn’t.”
Farhan Zamma
True stories
As part of his research on film piracy, Farhan Zamma learnt about real-life experiences of many filmmakers. He recounts, “Sanjay Gupta recalled being forced by the underworld to sell his film’s international rights at double the usual price so that those prints could be pirated abroad and smuggled back into India just before the release. Madhur Bhandarkar shared how some producers, overwhelmed by mounting losses, ended up selling their own reels to pirates simply to recover [a part of] the cost.”
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