London based Filmmaker and Actor speaks about his filmmaking journey during lockdown

Manish Kumar Srivastava is a versatile British Indian Actor and Filmmaker who is committed to bring fresh ideas and innovation in filmmaking world. Manish has worked in both Bollywood and International Projects and comes with a strong theatre background. Experiencing a system where things are not fair and almost no support for upcoming talent he decided to bring the change himself and started his filmmaking journey in 2020 with a short film ‘The Love Bet’ which had immense success at number of film international festivals and is available on Amazon Prime. Prior to the first lockdown, Manish was working towards creating his first feature-length film debut but unfortunately all plans to shoot this film in 2020 were shelved. The arts industry has been crippled by this pandemic but Manish took this challenge as an opportunity and came with a new project ‘The Invisible Enemy’. He also came up with a new approach during lockdown which was all done virtually and followed and iterative process for evolving the project during these challenging times.

The Invisible Enemy is a romantic dramedy written by, Manish Kumar Srivastava explores the conflict between our own desires and our heightened sense of responsibility in the age of news overload and the pressures of social media. It revolves around story of Jay, a carefree young man who sticks to the rules… If he agrees with them. When he doesn’t, he’s willing to bend or even break the rules if following those means his plans are interfered with. When the UK government responds to the Covid-19 pandemic by placing the entire country under lockdown, Jay and his girlfriend Stacy are forced to keep their distance. However, Jay is determined not to let the crisis interfere with his plans to surprise Stacy with something special for her 21st birthday. As their mutual friends gather online to throw Stacy a virtual birthday party, Jay is nowhere to be found… Realising the importance of the feature, Manish remarkably shot the film with a bare-bones crew and dedicated cast, all of whom have come together to make this possible. The project is now in the final stages of production and is all set to release in early 2022.