Two women sing on a concert stage with accompanists on mridangam and violin.

In production

Divinity 2.0

Feature documentary · In production · In production

Two sisters and a rebel set out to modernize Carnatic music, a 1,200-year-old Indian art form. Are they doing too much for too little?

Synopsis

Carnatic music is one of the world’s oldest classical forms, and some young people find it boring and elitist. Divinity 2.0 follows three artists who want to change that.

Aishwarya, a singer and young mother, carries her family’s musical expectations; her sister Saundarya, a Gen Z composer, wants to take the family sound somewhere new. Karthick, an engineer turned singer, violinist and band leader, has built a “neo-Carnatic” community that blends the tradition with world music and technology. Young audiences flock to him. The old guard and the patrons push back, calling it confusion rather than fusion.

Between a legacy the sisters must reshape and a rebel who wants to break free completely, the film asks what a 1,200-year-old art form owes its past, and whether the people reinventing it are doing too much for too little.

Film facts and credits

Format
Feature documentary
Year
In production
Status
In production
Director
Ankita M. Kumar
Producer
Ankita M. Kumar
With
Aishwarya and Saundarya, sisters, singer and composer; Karthick, singer, violinist and band leader; With T.H. Vinayakram and Ganesh Rajagopalan

Stills

  • Two women in silk saris sing on stage beside a mridangam player.
    In concert at a music sabha.
  • Two women sing into studio microphones in a rehearsal room.
    Recording session.
  • A violinist plays on stage between a guitarist and a percussionist.
    A neo-Carnatic band on stage.
  • Two young women look at a phone together on a terrace.
    Between rehearsals.
  • Hands hold printed black-and-white photographs of a classical singer.
    Looking through photographs of an earlier generation of singers.
  • A young woman speaks, gesturing, in a room lined with stringed instruments.
    In a room of tanpuras and veenas.
  • Musicians perform on a stage under a festival banner while an audience watches.
    A concert at a sabha's music festival.
  • A singer with a hand on his forehead sings into a microphone.
    In performance.
  • A row of violins hangs on a white wall; a woman sits in the foreground.
    Violins on the wall of a music room.