Wingman: Anuj Gulati's Indie Captures People Trying To Love, To Forget, And To Begin Again
Loneliness, fragile connections, missed chances, and bittersweet hope make Anuj Gulati's Wingman a relatable urban relationship drama.
By Minal Rudra
Published : October 30, 2025 at 5:17 PM IST
|Updated : October 31, 2025 at 12:49 PM IST
For many who come to Mumbai chasing dreams, the city moves faster than their hearts can keep up. In his debut feature Wingman, Anuj Gulati explores the ache of loneliness that hides beneath the noise of city life. The story follows a young man who helps others find love but struggles to move on from his own failed relationship. With warmth and emotional honesty sprinkled with dark humour, Gulati captures people trying to love, to forget, and to begin again.
The hour-long indie feature stars Shashank Arora as the heartbroken Omi, Trimala Adhikari as Nisha, an optimistic woman who could have been Omi's romantic partner but he pushes her away, and Auritra Ghosh as Shikha, Omi's childhood sweetheart who is now his ex.
When Anuj started writing Wingman, he knew one thing for sure: that it had to be personal and come from something he had lived. The debutant, who has lived in cities across India and has made Mumbai his second home for over a decade, feels that your first film must hold a part of you.
"Wingman was the most personal I could get. It was like documenting a phase of my life. I was trying to understand myself. I was also trying to escape sadness and not accept it.” The film, he says, grew out of that impulse. “A lot of the script never made it to the screen, but writing it helped me realise that my character was running away from his own sadness. And the truth is, escaping is never the answer. I think all of us carry a bit of that.”
That is perhaps why Wingman feels universal. It is a story about loneliness, about the small battles of the urban heart, and about a young man who tries to fix his personal messes on his own. Throughout the film, there are small, piercing moments where the emotions truly hit home: when Omi asks Nisha, “Aap mere baalon ke saath khelonge?”; when he tells the sanitary worker, who has become his only companion, “Mujhe ghar nahin jana”; and finally, when even that worker turns away, leaving Omi completely alone. These moments capture Omi in his emotionally fragile state with honesty.
The title came early. “Wingman was one of the first things I wrote down,” he recalls. “At first, it was the name of the dating service in the film. But I knew inside that it was also about a man who could fly but chooses not to. Or maybe he is not yet ready. I feel all of us go through that. We learn to fly only after we face ourselves.”
Writing the film took time. “We had five drafts,” Gulati says. “The process was messy. I just kept following the character. In earlier drafts he had other relationships, even one with his boss. But gradually, things fell away. It became leaner and more focused.”
Shashank is impressive as Omi. His casting, Anuj says, happened only in the last draft. “I saw an interview of Shashank online. There was a certain cynicism in him. The character had also become more cynical by then, a cynic of love. I thought he would be perfect.” He wanted someone who carried the city in his skin. “It’s an urban story. Shashank comes from that space. He understands the rhythm of that world.”
When told that it is hard to empathise with Omi for he appears to lack drive, Gulati smiles. “That’s intentional. The film is also a kind of warning for today’s youth. Everyone talks about self-love. But before you love yourself, you have to face your pain. You can’t just avoid it. There is this line by Rumi that stayed with me. He says, keep breaking your heart until it finally opens. That’s what Omi is doing without knowing it.”
Visually, Wingman captures a city that feels tight and airless. “We wanted it to look claustrophobic,” he says. “Because that’s how Omi feels.” He gives full credit to his cinematographer, Kumar Saurabh. “Once the script was ready, we started hunting for locations. My DOP, my ADs and I would drive around the city every day. We wanted places that could repeat in the story. Because Omi keeps going in circles.”
They found their locations one by one. “Some of them came to us by chance, and we used what Mumbai gave us. The nights are full of colour but also numbness. The days are brighter but duller in tone.” Sound was part of that plan. “Every location had its own sound. The hum of an AC in the alley. The water and the fish tank... they were not random. They belonged to the space.”
One of the film’s most striking images in the film has Omi sitting with an aquarium in the foreground, everything around him grey and lifeless except the glowing tank. That idea, Anuj says, came in during the edit. When he is truly alone, that is when the darkness creeps in.
The fish in the aquarium is a metaphor that suggests there is life and colour around Omi, but he is unable to see and feel it. The cigarette is another recurring metaphor in the film, serving as Omi's addiction and self-destruction. It represents the habit that slowly harms him, both physically and emotionally. Ironically, Omi believes that his smoking habit is the reason behind his breakup with Shikha. However, it is also the cigarette that brings him closer to Nisha.
There are also flashes of humour in the film. Moments that are sad but also funny. “That happens naturally when I write,” he says. “It’s not broad comedy, but it’s there. I think life is like that too. Even in sadness, something absurd always slips in.”
The film also speaks of loneliness in different forms. “Both Omi and Nisha are escaping their own realities,” Gulati says. “For a moment, their escapes meet and it works. But it cannot last. Even Nisha is running from something. She is leaving a broken marriage, but she hasn’t done the work on herself either.”
The last image of Wingman stays with the viewer. Omi walks away from darkness, towards the light. Gulati says that is the real point of the story. “He is finally ready to heal,” he says. “He hasn’t reached there yet. But he has started walking. That’s all that matters.”
Wingman premiered in 2021 on the festival circuit. It now finds a home on Lionsgate Play. “For indie filmmakers, it’s very tough, and personal stories are hard to place,” Gulati reflects on Wingman's journey as he signs off.
Read More
