‘House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths’ has been a mind-stirring journey: Leena Yadav

PTI, Oct 16, 2021, 2:11 PM IST

New Delhi: Filmmaker Leena Yadav said her docu-series “House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths” is a result of her “desperate” desire to decode the mystery of the infamous 2018 case.

Yadav, known for movies such as ”Parched”, ”Rajma Chawal” and ”Teen Patti”, is the showrunner and co-director of the docu-series, which is currently streaming on Netflix.

The three-part series traces the mystery behind the 2018 Burari deaths, where 11 members across three generations of a family were found dead under strange circumstances in their house in Delhi.

”I think everybody in India and different parts of the world knew about this case, after the news came out in July 2018. I knew about it then. I think from the word go, it got my attention and I was desperate to know how, why and what really happened there,” Yadav told PTI.

Despite following the intense media frenzy that surrounded the deaths, the filmmaker said she never really got answers to the many questions she had about the case.

”I didn’t feel like I had the answers. I remember there being a huge media noise around the case for around a week or two, and then it just disappeared. I didn’t get to know what really happened. ”A lot of the journalists that we spoke to who were dealing with the case also don’t know what really happened in the case. It was one of those things that just literally did fall off the map suddenly.” ”House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths” aims to take viewers through different stages of the investigation of the case, bringing forth striking and unexpected revelations.

Yadav believes there will be many takeaways for the audience from the show.

”This case actually has too many things that need to be talked about, introspected, and discussed. There’s not a single takeaway that I have, but it’s been an extremely emotional as well as a mind-stirring journey for me to do this. I hope the audience also has as many takeaways like we had as a whole team,” she added.

Contrary to her filmmaking experience, Yadav said she had no control over the narrative while directing the docu-series and that made the whole process a difficult one.

”In fiction, you start out with the script but for a documentary, you have to lose that control completely over narrative. You have to actually submit yourself to letting the subject reveal itself to you. ”At the end of it, it’s people, emotions, and the story that you’re trying to communicate. So despite being similar, the approach of making a feature and a docuseries is absolutely different.” ”House of Secrets: The Burari” has been co-directed by Anubhav Chopra and features an original score by A R Rahman.