India, July 2 -- How can political gamesmanship - the dog-eat-dog kind that is routine in coalition politics - be a mirror to romantic love? Both are seemingly antithetical to each other. In GAIA, a film written, directed and co-produced by 34-year-old, Delhi-based writer and director Abhay Kapoor, politics and love are in a parasitic coil, revealing not just fantasies of heterosexual men for political power and female subjugation and attention, but how technology irreversibly alters these fantasies.

With a running time of 45 minutes, Kapoor's taut screenplay, unfolds at the home of a seasoned, ageing politician Vivek Shukla (Atul Tiwari) who heads the ruling government. On a stormy night, Arindam Sehgal (Lakshya Goel), leader of the Lab...