Pinch

Through Pinch, Uttera Singh, the director and actor, balances dark comedy with moral gravity, revealing the fragility, contradictions, and complicity that permeate everyday life. Humor emerges with precision, illuminating human frailty without ever softening the ethical stakes.

Maitri (Uttera Singh), an ambitious young woman who gave up a promising future abroad to pursue her dream of becoming a travel vlogger, lives with her widowed mother, Shobha (Geeta Agrawal), in a bustling urban apartment complex. Shobha questions her daughter’s choices and insists that she accompany her and their neighbors on a religious pilgrimage. As Maitri’s YouTube channel is struggling to gain traction, she joins the journey, hoping to capture compelling content. When Rajesh (Nitesh Pandey), their seemingly respectable landlord, gropes her along the way, Maitri refuses to remain silent…

By beginning its story within the pulsating vibrancy of Navratri, a festival marked by both communal joy and ritualised austerity, Pinch becomes a subtle collision of festivity and fracture. The choice of setting is no mere aesthetic flourish. The clashing rhythms of devotion underscore the film’s central tensions, magnifying Maitri’s impulsive and morally fraught decisions. Her act of retaliation triggers unforeseen consequences that upend not only her life but also Shobha’s, shaking the fragile equilibrium of their interconnected social circle. Maitri is chastised for her defiance, while Shobha, who once exchanged recipes with her neighbour, Heena (Sunita Rajwar), and was relied upon for countless small favours, finds herself suddenly shunned. Rajesh’s wife, Rani (Sapna Sand), demands an apology from Maitri and threatens eviction if the family refuses. Set almost entirely within an apartment complex, the narrative transforms this enclosed space into a microcosm of larger societal dynamics. The claustrophobic corridors, shared balconies, and overheard conversations become a stage for moral theater, where judgmental behavior coexists with the semblance of neighborly camaraderie. The film exposes the polite façades maintained even as predation and silence circulate beneath them, revealing the high cost of rebellion.

Pinch confronts gaslighting, guilt, and societal silence using humor not to soften but to refract discomfort. Its sharpest insights emerge from the everyday polite avoidance, the impulse to preserve appearances, and reveal how misconduct is normalised. Maitri’s moral ambiguity is meant to unsettle, sparking dialogue about courage, complicity, and the uneasy trade-offs of middle-class respectability. By rooting these tensions in a familiar setting, the film becomes both a mirror and a provocation, forcing us to confront the quiet reckonings that shape communal life.

The men in Maitri’s world occupy sharply contrasting spectrums. Rajesh, the landlord, is predatory, exploiting his position to harass her, while Samir (Badri Chavan), a successful food vlogger, supports and encourages her ambitions. Then, there is Lily (Jahnvi Marathe), a beauty Instagrammer who becomes the target of Maitri’s retaliatory pinch. Lily, in turn, faces the consequences when Rajesh is beaten by her husband, making her both victim and unwitting participant in the fallout. The film thus presents a world where culpability is diffused. No one is entirely innocent, and every action reverberates, raising uncomfortable questions about accountability, retaliation, and moral responsibility.

Uttera Singh wears the hats of both director and lead actor with remarkable ease. Her controlled performance grounds the film and draws us firmly to her side. Geeta Agrawal infuses Shobha with quiet urgency, capturing the torment of a woman cornered by the impossible choice between her daughter’s dignity and her family’s precarious shelter. The late Nitesh Pandey plays Rajesh with unnerving precision, his facade of respectability barely masking the menace beneath. Sapna Sand’s Rani, authoritative and layered, adds steel to the domestic sphere, while Sunita Rajwar turns neighbour Heena into a sharply etched portrait of hypocrisy and opportunism. Badri Chavan brings warmth and credibility to Samir, a figure of solidarity in Maitri’s isolating battle.

Adam Linzey’s cinematography frames the domesticity within the interiors with an almost deceptive calm. His careful framing externalises Maitri’s private turbulence through a striking tension between polish and rawness. The trio of editors – Faroukh Virani, Louise Innes, and Vanessa Ruane – create a jagged yet cohesive tempo as they create the oscillation between Maitri’s denial and defiance. Jan Bezouska’s sound design heightens this dissonance, making silence as oppressive as confrontation while Raashi Kulkarni’s score resists sentimentality. It slips in at precise moments, not to soothe, but to underscore unease.

Pinch is less about victory than about the quiet fractures that ripple through families and communities. Singh refuses neat resolutions, instead tracing how a single act reverberates across generations, friendships, and faith. It is a film that reminds us that silence often carries as much weight as action. What lingers is not the spectacle of confrontation, but the uneasy question of how ordinary people live with truths they would rather not face.

After its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in June earlier this year, Pinch  screened at the just concluded Indian Film Festival of Sydney.

Hindi, Drama, Color