Tabbar director Ajitpal Singh shares his secret sauce: ‘The more local you go, the more global you become’

Ajitpal Singh gained a lot of appreciation after his film Fire in the Mountains premiered at Sundance Film Festival and his web series Tabbar got global acclaim.

Ajitpal Singh is a part of the BAFTA Breakthrough program in 2022.

For director Ajitpal Singh, 2021 was a breakthrough year. Not only did his film Fire in the Mountains get selected for Sundance Film Festival, he was also one of the most acclaimed directors as his SonyLIV web series Tabbar gained admiration from audience all over India.

Tabbar was the story of a middle-class Punjabi family that finds itself in unusual circumstances after one of its members makes a mistake. The mistake might have been innocent at that moment, but the consequences of that one error end up being fatal. Talking to indianexpress.com, Ajitpal Singh shared that the secret sauce behind Tabbar’s success is its very specific niche. “The more local you go, the more global you become,” said Singh.

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With his Sundance film Fire in the Mountains and the success of Tabbar, Ajitpal is a part of the BAFTA Breakthrough program in 2022. The program selects talents with unique voices from different parts of the world, who have had a breakthrough year, and gives them a year-long mentorship allowing them to have the opportunity to better their craft.

Looking back at his years of hard work, Ajitpal explained that a creator spends years in isolation, waiting for something to happen and when something does happen, it feels like a massive breakthrough. “You work for so many years in isolation. No one knows that you are working, you refine your craft, you work very hard, you keep working and it seems like nothing happens, and nothing happened for many years, and then suddenly something happens,” he said.

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Ajitpal spoke about his expectations from the BAFTA Breakthrough program and said that the geographical lines for the storytelling industry are very blurry right now due to the rise of the OTT space across the world. “Content from one country is being watched across the world,” he said. Ajitpal shared that storytellers have now started thinking of the global audience that is “not restricted by country or region or by language. So that’s the direction we are going in.” The program intends to bring storytellers and technicians from different countries together and Ajitpal believes that this will help them in exchanging their viewpoints, their expertise so they can get better at their craft.

“I am looking forward to picking certain ideas or working together with international talent and see how we can create content that can work at a global level. I think the answers are already there, the more local you go the more global you become,” he said.

Ajitpal also revealed that he is working on a feature film at the moment, which will be of the horror genre.