Netflix is ready to stream a docuseries, Alma Matters: Inside The IIT Dream. (Photo: Netflix/Trailer, Riti Mohapatra/Instagram) The shining, aspirational exterior of IIT Kharagpur hardly ever shares its light with the despair, self-doubt and other mental challenges that the engineering aspirants face inside the campus. But that’s what Netflix’s upcoming series Alma Matters: Inside the IIT dream is intended to explore. The streamer on Saturday unveiled the trailer of the docuseries, and the almost three-minute-long clip has its students giving a sense of what it means to be an IITian.
Directed by Pratik Patra and Prashant Raj and produced by Dopamine Media & Entertainment Pvt Ltd, Alma Matters aims to delve into the world of IIT Kharagpur, which is dominated by overwhelming competitiveness, inherent sexism, a fight to “preserve identity”, and also an undying spirit to overcome challenges.
One of the highlights of the trailer is the evident isolation that one might feel in an environment such as IIT Kharagpur’s, where you are detached from the realities of the outer world as the harshness of the place itself looms large on one’s mind.
It’s, however, also the same place that gives a sense of bonhomie to its inhabitants, as they find companionship and comfort in shared joys and sorrows. A big surprise in the trailer comes towards the end, as maverick comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath, who is an IIT Kharagpur alumnus. Biswa has delivered several pieces of comedy about his time at IIT and also what constitutes a typical engineer.
Alma Matters: Inside the IIT Dream, which is a three-part series, will begin streaming on Netflix from May 14.
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