Ashim Ahluwalia On Portraying The Extremes Of India’s Wealth Gap In Netflix Young Adult Drama ‘Class’
deadline.comAshim Ahluwalia, known as a director of edgy films such as John & Jane and Miss Lovely that have premiered at Toronto and Cannes film festivals, is not an obvious choice to direct a young adult drama series for Netflix.
But when local production house Bodhitree Multimedia approached him with a proposal for a Hindi remake of Spanish show Elite, he jumped at the chance. “I’ve always been interested in making something on teenagers, especially wealthy urban teenagers, because that’s a world that I know,” says Ahluwalia, who grew up in the tony neighbourhoods of south Mumbai. “I went to a school that was very different to the school in Elite, or in this series, but had the same elements of class conflict.
So while I’d never thought about doing a series before, I thought this would be an interesting project to do.” Created by Carlos Montero and Dario Madrona, Elite follows three scholarship kids from a modest socioeconomic background who get placed in an exclusive high school and have to quickly navigate that world.
Ahluwalia says he started watching the show thinking it was a typical young adult drama, but then “something really unpredictable happens in the writing.
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