Independent cinema needs support, says Richa Chadha at India Today Mumbai Conclave
Richa Chadha, Kiran Rao and Guneet Monga were the guests on the first day of India Today Mumbai Conclave 2024. In their session titled How women are redefining Indian cinema, they discussed how women are changing the landscape of cinema.
Actress and producer Richa Chadha, director, screenwriter and producer Kiran Rao and producer Guneet Monga were the guests on the first day of India Today Mumbai Conclave 2024. In a session titled Take II: How women are redefining Indian cinema, the three powerful women of Hindi cinema discussed how women have changed the landscape not just in front of the screen but also behind it. They also talked about how their films have fared well globally.
Guneet Monga started the session by calling Missing Ladies one of the most beautiful films of the year. She didn’t give tips on how to win an Oscar, as she did with The Elephant Whisperers, but she did explain how films make it to the top five. She said it’s important to promote your films and said, “It’s time we flex our films and put up hoardings even on the moon.”
Richa Chadha said, “Any kind of independent cinema needs support. When you have structures and some amount of subsidy money or soft money, it makes the creators’ job easier. Yes, we are doing something right in terms of the script, but the talent was always there. But that kind of soft money kept us going.”
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She also added, “It’s written by my school friend. We are the girls from Girls Will Be Girls and it’s being taken to an international platform. Female friendship is very important. Female solidarity, sisterhood, female friendship is very important. I take advice from them, both professionally and non-professionally. I think female solidarity, women standing by each other, teamwork and taking care of each other, is very important. It’s having good results in the world today.”
Kiran Rao on ‘missing ladies and not casting stars’
The story really resonated with me, especially because it was about two girls looking for their independence, their opportunity, and their voice. These kinds of stories appeal to filmmakers like me because I think we rarely see stories written by women and about women. I think it’s really important that we invest more in female storytellers, producers, and actors, and female-driven projects. It made me realize that I’m actually more aware of and interested in women’s experiences, and will probably continue to include interesting female characters in everything I do.
We felt that if the story stayed grounded and organic, it would be more believable and entertaining. That is one of the things that the audience responded to the most. The brand new faces ensured that you actually forget that they are actors and you don’t know who they are. So, you forget and immerse yourself in that world. I think that really worked in our favour.
Of course we worked really hard to take all these ideas that we wanted to put into the story about women’s experiences, their everyday struggles at different stages of their lives, to put it into the story and tell it through humor because no one wants a lecture. I think humor is one of the best ways to address some of the most uncomfortable issues. Because of girls swapping on a train veil Humor developed very naturally. When we learn to laugh at ourselves, we take complex and uncomfortable problems and laugh at them, we have conversations, we make space to talk to people we think are very different from us.
Guneet Monga on the Oscars
Last year was really special with Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, RRR and Elephant Whispers being nominated in three different Oscar categories. We all really felt like a unit, promoting our films. One has to understand that these American awards depend a lot on American distribution and now, there is a system in place for 97 years.
The Oscars are held in the US and US distribution is the focal point of it because it is a year-long job. RRR was also able to release in the US, which is a huge achievement and a huge expense, but running distribution there and thinking about it beforehand is in its full course. It is very important. Period, End of Sentence and The Elephant Whisperers were both distributed by Netflix. They were both originals, so we had a US distributor. In fact, even if you look at it, Lagaan was backed by Sony Picture Classic and they ran a brilliant campaign.
Actually getting a nomination is a big deal as well. It’s a whole process, and we’ve gotten very close with RRR and The Elephant Whisperers. But thinking about US distribution as independent filmmakers is really an ongoing effort.
Richa Chadha reveals why she turned producer
The reason for becoming a producer was to have more creative control over my own destiny as an artist and to be able to have more say over how the film is marketed, produced, and positioned, who we cast. We weren’t making an independent film with Girls Will Be Girls and the budget was probably more than we needed.
Being associated with this course has made me very humble because I understand how challenging the life of a producer is. It is very challenging, but at the same time, it is very different from before. Now a producer cannot just throw money and get the job done. Now, these people sitting here are putting their soul, their heart and trying to decide the creative destiny of the script by bringing in the right kind of people.
Kiran Rao takes a break from direction
Honestly, it wasn’t because I wasn’t working all the time, but I never got to a point where I was completely happy with what I was writing. Sometimes, it depends on the state of your mind. A lot of my time went into being a mother, and I was very content being a mother. Producing films gave me the opportunity to be a part of the industry.
We technically started working on Missing Ladies in 2018 when we read the script, so it’s been seven years since my film released, but I have a lot of things that I’ve written. Women pride themselves on being multitaskers and doing a lot of things, but actually we should stop and ask for help and say, ‘Look, you know what, actually, I would really like to stop everything and direct a film’. But you get a sense of responsibility and have to make sure that everyone is doing well, including your family, and that’s something we should step up and ask for help and take care of ourselves.