Sudhir Mishra’s new film Serious Men revolves around Ayyan Mani (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a personal assistant at a scientific research facility in Mumbai. Ayyan plans an elaborate scheme to falsely portray his son Adi (Aakshath Das) as a prodigy to improve the boy’s prospects.
Key characters include Ayyan’s wife (Indira Tiwari), his boss Acharya (Nassar) and Shweta Basu Prasad as a politician. The Netflix original film will be out on October 2.
Serious Men is adapted from Manu Joseph’s 2010 novel of the same name. In the novel, Ayyan Mani is a Dalit from Tamil Nadu. His Brahmin boss Acharya antagonises his colleagues with his contrarian views on science while pursuing an affair with his assistant. The key themes include Ayyan’s observations about Brahminism and Acharya’s questioning of conventional scientific beliefs.
The screen adaptation plays out as a father-son…