Nail Polish 2021

A celebrated sports coach and former army officer Veer Singh is arrested and charged with the rape and murder of two migrant children, a case that also casts suspicion on dozens of other missing children over a span of five years. The weight of the accusations, the public attention, and the moral complexity of the charges set the stage for a courtroom drama that questions memory, identity, and the limits of justice.

In steps Siddharth Jaisingh, an ambitious and successful defense lawyer whose career ambitions are tied to the case. He approaches the defense with confidence, convinced that he can maneuver through the overwhelming evidence and turn Veer’s fate in his favor. As the courtroom becomes the arena, Jaisingh’s strategy evolves from presenting a defense to shaping a political opportunity, and his own ambitions begin to influence how the case is argued and perceived.

After a prison attack, Veer appears to lose his memory and undergoes a dramatic shift, adopting a second personality that is anything but Veer the public knows. The new identity is a timid, middle-aged Kashmiri woman named Charu Raina, who claims that this is Veer’s true self. The revelation shocks the courtroom and complicates the case in ways neither side anticipated, casting doubt on what is real and what is a strategic performance. The film’s title itself nods to this transformation, hinting at hidden layers beneath the surface.

As the trial progresses, Jaisingh pivots his defense, arguing that Veer suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and that the “Veer Singh” personality is no longer present to be tried. The prosecution counters, challenging the sincerity and stability of the DID diagnosis and whether the two personalities are genuinely separate or a calculated act meant to manipulate the system. The tension between science and skepticism fuels both the defense and the prosecution as they clash over the legitimacy of the claims and the implications for accountability.

A psychiatrist testifies that Veer indeed has DID, lending scientific weight to the defense’s argument. The court grapples with the difficult question of how to punish a person who may not be fully present in the body that is standing before it, leading to a mistrial as the judge contemplates the implications of the shifting identities. The verdict hangs in the balance, leaving a pall of uncertainty over the proceedings and the people involved.

In a final, quietly unsettling moment, the Charu persona looks directly at the camera while handling a paperweight, suggesting that the entire public performance—whether a ruse, a genuine psychological episode, or something more calculated—may have been a carefully staged deception by a manipulative psychopath. The ending leaves viewers with no easy answers and invites interpretation about who orchestrated what, and why.