Dolcy D’Cruz
Growing up watching Hindi films, Dr Swapnil Salkar from Bicholim initially pursued a career in medicine for a decade but eventually followed his passion for storytelling and switched to scriptwriting. His talent was recently recognised when the film ‘Stolen’, for which he co wrote the script with director Karan Tejpal and producer Gaurav Dhingra, won the Best OTT Script Award at the 2026 Chetak Screen Awards in Mumbai. The film was also awarded three more awards including Best OTT Film, Best OTT Actor and Best OTT Director. The film starring Abhishek Banerjee, Shubham Vardhan and Mia Maelzer, had an international premiere at Venice Film Festival in 2023 and after that had a festival run all over the world including festivals in London, Zurich and Beijing.
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The film was released in June 2025 on Amazon Prime exclusively on OTT. Dr Swapnil Salkar also known by his pseudonym Agadbumb says, “Venice Film Festival is one of the top four festivals in the world and we were the only Indian film in 2023 at Venice. We received a lot of eyeballs at the festivals. Instead of a theatrical release, on OTT the film remains for a long time and there is always a resurgence of people who keep watching it.” Speaking about the writing process, Dr Swapnil says it was not just limited to the script but also led to the post production process. The writing process began in November 2019 and was supposed to be followed by the shoot schedule in April 2020 but was held then the lockdown happened. “In that process, we were always writing because I was writing with my producer and director. It was a collaborative effort where we took this idea which was from a newspaper article where these two young boys had gone for fishing in a village in Assam in 2018 and there was a rumour that they are kidnappers and then they were lynched. We took it as an inspiration and crafted a whole different story around it, set in a fictional place. We start writing a story and after a while the story dictates itself through us.
We are just a medium and there is some grace, something which flows through us when the story becomes good,” explains Dr Swapnil. The film was shot in January 2023 over a 28 days schedule. The film got selected to Venice in July 2023. He further adds, “I was part of the post production work, during the dubbing and even on set. I was part from the scratch till the end. In our writing sessions, the actors were also part of the writing sessions. It was a very collaborative effort where we sat down with everyone and got it done.” Dr Swapnil shuttles between Mumbai, Delhi and Goa for his projects. But he tries to remain in Goa as much as possible. “Goa is the best. Half the industry is coming from Mumbai to Goa. I have my roots in Goa as I was born and brought here. I have that nostalgic value with the place where I belong. I’m closer to my family and the language which I love.
It’s not a limitation or obstacle. In that sense, I carry a little part of Goa within myself,” says Dr Swapnil. What are his upcoming projects? “Currently, I am working on a horror comedy Hindi film set in Goa based on a modern adaptation of a Konkani folklore, which is being produced and is under the works. I am working on another project with Gaurav Dhingra, the producer of ‘Stolen’, which is also a neo-noir set in Delhi. I keep myself busy in a lot of script doctoring work where I work as a script consultant. I am working on a script doctoring Telugu film for another producer,” concludes Dr Swapnil.
