Like many women in this country, the years that filmmaker Shuchi Talati spent in school were shaped by heavy policing: not just of romantic expressions and desires, but also the length of her skirts, and conversations with teenage boys. Movies, barring some exceptions, too featured coy women, dancing around trees or in snowy mountains, clad in chiffon sarees, miraculously surviving the cold. "We all grew up with shame around sexuality and then this was reinforced on our screens. If you think about the films from the 90s, women often only became marriageable when they put on a salwar kameez," Talati says.
It's this "legacy of shame" that Talati - who grew up in Vadodara -was determined to push against in her debut feature, Girls Will Be Girls, a tender coming-of-age drama set in an Indian boarding school. The Indo-French production bagged an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, along with a special jury award for its lead actor, Preeti Panigrahi. Talati is in good company. The year saw multiple other women filmmakers from the country making it big on the global stage.
"What we need is people to trust us with their money, give us enough budgets and theatrical screens in a more consistent way" Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light continues to add to its award kitty after bagging the historic Cannes Grand Prix and a Golden Globe nomination. Rima Das' sequel to the critically acclaimed Assamese film Village Rockstars recently bagged the Kim Jiseok award at Busan Film Festival. Nidhi Saxena's debut feature Sad Letters To An Imaginary Woman earned the Asian Cinema Fund in the post production category at Busan, the first Indian female director to do so. Closer home, Kiran Rao's comedy Laapataa Ladies emerged as a surprise hit though it missed out on the Oscars' shortlist.Perhaps what stands out even more than the awards are the stories themselves. Not only are all the films made by women, but centre heavily around women. They feature women confiding in one another, travelling together in public transport, navigating grief and loneliness, and guiding others through it. A key theme that emerges is the exploration of dreams and desires, often in ways seldom seen in Indian cinema before.
Laapataa Ladies' Jaya aspires to a degree in organic farming, while Rima Das' protagonist in Village Rockstars climbs trees and dreams of having her own rock band in a small village in Assam. Das' sequel is about Bhunu growing up in a world shaped by patriarchy and climate change. "Even if I look at my own family, knowingly or unknowingly, you see these things around you... how patriarchy operates. Feminism or empowerment cannot just be about punchy dialogues, but a lot of small nuances and tenderness needs to go into it," says Das, a self-taught filmmaker.
Others explore various shades of desire. SaxeNa's dreamlike film, for instance, revolves around the intimate relationship between a mother and daughter. Interestingly, the mother, who is in her 80s, is still deeply in love with a past lover, even as she confronts emotional scars with her daughter. "I wanted to show the mother as an entity, as an individual, unlike the ones we usually see on screen, whose only concern in life is the well-being of her kids," Saxena says.
A mother's desire is a central plot theme in Girls Will Be Girls too, almost leading to aKiran Rao sense of tension throughout. Even as the protagonist Mira navigates her journey of sexuality, the audience is teased with a 'love triangle' angle as the mother Anila vies for the attention of Mira's love interest in some scenes. Talati, 39, says she was conscious about adopting a non-judgmental and compassionate lens throughout the film. "As I started developing the character, I felt she's so young. Why shouldn't she have this desire? Why shouldn't she flirt with this young boy and get a thrill? She's not having a lot of care and attention coming away either from her husband or her daughter, and certainly doesn't. seem to be having good sex or any sex at all," Talati says.
Does a woman filmmaker behind the lens, then, lead to a 'female gaze"? Malayalam actor Kani Kusruti, who played Anila in Talati's film and nurse Prabha in Kapadia's project, says some male directors she has worked with have had no male gaze, while some women have had it. "It's like saying all women are feminists, which isn't the case. Some women can also carry patriarchal values. Not having a male gaze is something you can work on and acquire, no matter which gender you are," she says.
Is 2024, then, a turning point? Das, for one, is a little skeptical. "It's a positive buzz for sure, but I have seen a lot of ups and downs. What we need is people to trust us with their money, so that we can reach home audiences," the director says.
Saxena says that while her film went on showcase at several film festivals, finding funding wasn't easy. "I knew it would be so tough that I didn't even try to find a producer. I had to sell my car to fund it," the director recalls.
Even if you manage to make it, getting theatrical space perhaps remains the biggest battle. While Girls Will Be Girls was released directly on OTT, Kapadia has channelised her followers on X to push for more screens. Despite winning all that the glitzy cine festivals had to offer, her "biggest achievement," she wrote on social media, was securing the film's release in the city of Bhubaneswar, thousands of miles away from the podium of Cannes.
