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All We Imagine As Light by Payal Kapadia (third from right) won this year’s second highest award at the Cannes Film Festival
In 2024, as Bollywood struggled to find its footing, smaller films made by Indian women that told nuanced stories made headlines at home and around the world.
In May, All We Imagine As Light by Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia made history by winning the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.
In the months since, All We Imagine As Light has become a juggernaut of independent cinema, sweeping film festivals and the awards circuit. It was judged best international film by prestigious associations, including the New York Film Critics Circle and the Toronto Film Critics Association. It also earned two Golden Globe nominations, including Ms. Kapadia’s for best director.
It also appeared on several best film lists of the year, including the BBC and the New York Times.
And he has company.
Director Shuchi Talati’s coming-of-age drama Girls Will Be Girls won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival. Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies (Lost Ladies) spent at least two months in Netflix’s top 10 in India and was chosen as the country’s official Oscar entry (a controversial decision). Laapataa Ladies is not on the Academy shortlist. What made it successful was the Hindi film Santosh by Anglo-Indian director Sandhya Suri, which was chosen as the UK’s Oscar entry.
Is this sudden wave of success for Indian films an aberration or a long-awaited shift in global consciousness?
“It’s the culmination of both,” says film critic Shubhra Gupta, emphasizing that these films were not “made overnight.”
For example, Shuchi Talati, the director of Girls Will Be Girls, and his co-producer Richa Chadha were in college together when they first came up with the idea for the film. “They’ve been working on it for years,” Gupta says.
“It’s pure coincidence that 2024 became the release year for these films, sparking conversations together.”
Girls will be girls
Shuchi Talati’s coming-of-age drama Girls Will Be Girls won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival
This happy alignment was a cinematic dream. The global impact of these films is rooted in their quality and their exploration of universal themes like loneliness, relationships, identity, gender and resilience. With strong female voices and unconventional feminist narratives, these stories venture into territories unexplored by mainstream Indian cinema.
In All We Imagine As Light, a film made in Hindi, Marathi and Malayalam, three migrant women from Mumbai navigate empathy, resilience and human connection. The narrative touches on themes of loneliness and the socio-political landscape, including scrutiny of Hindu-Muslim interfaith relations, as shown through the character of Anu (Divya Prabha) and her bond with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon).
Kapadia told the BBC that even though the women in her films are financially independent, they still face limitations in their personal lives, especially when it comes to love.
“To me, love in India is very political… women seem to hold a lot of the so-called family honor and protection of caste lineage. So if she marries someone who is of “A different religion or caste, it becomes a problem for me, it’s really a method to control women and infantilize them,” she says.
Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls explores female adolescence, rebellion and intergenerational conflict through the story of a 16-year-old girl studying at a strict Himalayan boarding school and her broken relationship with her mother, Anila , who struggles with his own vulnerabilities and unresolved emotions.
“It’s the kind of coming-of-age film that we don’t make at all in India,” Gupta says. “He looks at women with a very empathetic and very warm look.”
“The times when people feel emotions with and without their bodies, their minds, that exploration but without infantilizing the experience – that has never been a part of mainstream Indian cinema,” she adds.
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Kiran Rao’s satire Laapata Ladies (right) featured young and new faces in lead roles
Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies did not perform well at the box office but received warm reviews from viewers and critics. At a BAFTA screening in London this month, Ms Rao described the current moment as “truly special for Indian women”, expressing hope for a continued wave of such stories.
His film is a satirical comedy about two young brides who are accidentally swapped on a train because of their veils. It offers a pointed commentary on patriarchy, identity and gender roles, a departure from decades of traditional male-centric Indian films.
“A lot of us who are very patriarchal in our thinking often are because that’s how we were raised,” Bollywood star Aamir Khan, the film’s co-producer, said after the screening. “But we need to be understanding, at least try to help each other, even to get out of this kind of thinking.”
The biggest surprise this year came from the United Kingdom, which selected the Hindi-language film Santosh, directed by British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri, as its Oscar contender. Shot entirely in India over a 44-day schedule, the film featured a predominantly female crew. Starring Indian actors Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajbhar, Santosh was co-produced by people and companies from the UK, India, Germany and France.
The film is inherently an Indian story about violence against women, unfolding like a tense thriller.
Goswami says the success of Santosh and All We Imagine as Light is a testament to the merging of boundaries and expansion of film industries, creating a space for cross-pollination and exchange.
“We often think that these Indian films require a (specific) cultural context, but that is not the case. Any film driven by emotion will find universal resonance, regardless of its origins,” she said at the BBC.
Santosh
Shahana Goswami stars in Santosh, a tense thriller that is the UK’s official entry to the Oscars
Three of the films – All We Imagine as Light, Girls Will Be Girls and Santosh – share another common trait: they are transnational co-productions.
Goswami agrees that this could be a formula for the future.
“With a French producer, for example, a film has the possibility of being seen by a French audience who may follow this producer or the film industry at large. This is how it becomes more accessible and more relevant to globally,” she says.
Even in Bollywood, some films directed by women have seen huge success this year. Stree 2, a horror comedy about a mysterious woman fighting a monster who kidnaps free-spirited women, was the second biggest hit of the year and played in cinemas for months.
On streaming platforms, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s opulent Netflix series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, an exploration of misogyny and exploitation in the lives of courtesans in pre-independent India, was among the TV shows most searched for by Google of the year.
Their success appears to signal a growing appetite for such stories, their broad appeal demonstrating that mainstream cinema can tackle important themes without sacrificing entertainment value.
Despite systemic challenges, 2024 highlighted the global power of Indian female voices and the demand for diverse stories. This boost could be crucial for the Indian film industry in enabling wider distribution of its independent films and paving the way for a more diverse and equitable cinematic landscape.
