Like many ‘90s kids, Munavar Zama grew up on films like Kal Ho Naa Ho, Hum Tum, Jerry Maguire, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually and When Harry Met Sally. “They had all those tropes of a good rom-com: boy meets girl, maybe a bit of reluctance and misunderstanding, then they fall in love. I am a big fan of this particular genre,” he laughs, during an interview in Bengaluru. This brand of cinema especially appeals to him because it involves “an equal relationship between the boy and the girl, with the latter having as much agency as the former.”

Not surprisingly, Munavar’s debut film Chasing Rahul, a 60-minute romp through modern-day Bengaluru, starring Sunaina Ruth, Saketh Janardhana, Naimunnisa Khan, and Nevin Reuben, follows this template.

The charming love story between an old-school romantic, Sama, and the effervescent, if flaky, Rahul highlights the complexities of modern dating. “Love in the time of algorithms, as we say,” says Munavar, who believes that while dating may be easier on paper, dating fatigue is real.

“Access is easier in modern dating, as everything is just one swipe away. So the efforts, the grand gestures, the traditional wooing, the little things associated with old-school dating sometimes go away,” he says. “Additionally, there is also the temptation that a more compatible person is there in the next swipe,” says Munavar, who believes that relationships that work depend on how you work through things together. “You cherish the good parts, accept certain differences and come to common ground on others.”

Chasing Rahul is also very much a film of place, with Bengaluru being as vivid a character as the two protagonists, who romance each other in some of the city’s most familiar spots, including the KR Puram flower market, VV Puram food street, Kanteerava Stadium, Sankey Tank, Ulsoor Lake, Vidyarthi Bhavan, Vidhana Soudha, Cubbon Park, Church Street, and Indiranagar’s 100 Feet Road. “I moved to Bengaluru in 2022, and in a way the city helped me reinvent myself,” Munavar explains. Not only did he find great friends, relationships, and communities, but it also “nurtured the artist in me.”

Like Munavar, the film’s protagonist, Rahul, is also a new migrant to the city, one which has both protected its old-school charm and evolved into the country’s technology capital, as Munavar points out. “Rahul is in love with the city, and wants to share the magic with others.” This includes Sama, a localite, who ends up falling in love with her city again over the course of the film.

“I wanted to make the film a one-hour trip through Bengaluru, where hopefully even the people who grew up here will find something that to cherish and celebrate the city.”

Munavar, who grew up in Coimbatore, calls himself “a connoisseur of stories.” He recalls being enthralled by everything that came on cable TV back in the day. “I started with Bollywood movies, both the good ones and the cringe films. As I grew older, the range expanded to include world cinema and Hollywood and I also became active in film societies.”

Though Munavar had always been a fan of the medium and dreamt of becoming a filmmaker, life soon took over. So, he went on to complete a degree in mechanical engineering and moved to Saudi Arabia to work. “I was a guy who would take all my friends to the movie theatre on the first day. Then I moved to Saudi Arabia, which didn’t even have movie theatres back then.”

He spent years there working in construction, thinking filmmaking was merely a pipe dream. “I lied to myself, telling myself that I wasn’t a filmmaker but a film viewer,” says Munavar, who later returned to India and pursued an MBA at IIM Ahmedabad. “I thought of getting a job with some OTT platform, in a corporate role and working my way into movies. I applied to every platform you can think of a hundred times, but did not get an interview call,” he says.

Instead, Munavar moved to the FMCG sector, and during his last job as National Manager, Digital Marketing at Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, he decided to rekindle his film dream. “I realised I needed to invest in myself. After all, if you don’t believe in your dreams, who will?”

The film idea emerged from a play Munavar began writing in 2023. “The play was about an idealistic girl, Sama, navigating adulthood and romance,” he says, adding that Sama, an idealist like Munavar himself, often felt shortchanged by adult life and modern dating.

Around the same time, Munavar also thought of making a series of meet-cute shorts for social media platforms. As he began writing for this second project, Sama ended up getting intertwined in these stories, so “I took her from my play and put her there. That is how the movie started.”

A series of choices made during filming expanded the scope of the project, starting with shooting it in landscape mode instead of vertically. “Each professional addition made the project bigger. The music, the camera, the edit, the performance. From the first day of the shoot to the last day, we didn’t realise it would come on the big screen,” says Munavar, who used his savings to make the film, which he describes as “imperfectly perfect. I’ve made every mistake that you are not supposed to, while making a debut film,” he smiles.

Take, for instance, the choice to make a film in English. “Traditionally, people would say to make a movie in a regional language since English-language films don’t work in India.” Or his choice of actors. “When you choose your leads, people nowadays check Instagram following or choose someone well-established.”

He has also chosen to eschew the grammar of independent filmmaking, which strives to make a film more festival-friendly. “I did not follow the algorithm…what an OTT or cinema theatre wants because we didn’t really know what we were making,” admits Munavar, who believes it is simply the manifestation and prayers of the entire team that brought them to a theatre in the first place. “I am grateful we have reached the theatre, but the battle is not won. We also have to make sure that the people of the city get to know about the movie.”

Despite his current trepidations, the journey so far has given him the confidence to make more films. “I’ve already written my next screenplay, and again this city is a very important part of that story. Hopefully, once the film is out and things settle down, I can go back to polishing my script.”

Chasing Rahul will release in select theatres in the city on September 18