On a rainy evening in 2014, Megha Ramaswamy sat nervously in the back row of a packed screening hall. Her short film Newborns, an experimental work without dialogues, was moments from its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was a film she thought no one would see. “I didn’t even send my first film Bunny to festivals,” she says. “I didn’t think it was worth watching.”
Four years later, Reema Sengupta’s breakout short Counterfeit Kunkoo premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the US. “I don’t even remember sending it, to be honest,” she says with a laugh. “I think some WIP (work in progress) cut had gone there and we got selected based on that…. I remember reading the email five times because I couldn’t believe we were actually selected.”
For Ramaswamy and Sengupta, and for a generation of women rewriting the rules of what Indian cinema can be, this was immense.
A few years later, the trickle has become a stream. In 2023, The Elephant Whisperers, a gentle Tamil documentary directed by Kartiki Gonsalves and produced by Guneet Monga, won India its first Oscar for best documentary (short). Monga, long known in industry circles as a fierce champion of indie voices, broke into the mainstream like no Indian male filmmaker had in years.
Then came Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes last year. “I think there is a positive movement toward more female directors in India, and I am part of that,” she told the Cannes website.
She was right. Indian women are no longer outliers at Sundance or Berlinale; they’re contenders. Platforms such as MUBI and Netflix are acquiring their films and European universities are teaching them.
For instance, Lalanna’s Song, released this May on MUBI. “It was an experiment in every sense,” says Ramaswamy. “We had minimal resources but maximum emotion. Watching Parvathy (Thiruvothu) and Rima (Kallingal) together on screen, watching Nakshatra Indrajith sing—those were electric moments.”
Growing up in the cinephile culture of 1990s Pune, Ramaswamy’s earliest exposure to cinema came through Kurosawa, Bergman and De Sica. “I remember watching Bicycle Thieves with my grandfather,” she says.
It was this deep love for storytelling that took her to the Film and Television Institute of India, where she was part of India’s first screenwriting course. “Being a literature student, I realised film was where both my loves, writing and visual storytelling, could meet,” she says.
Though Ramaswamy started out as a screenwriter—she wrote the screenplay for Shaitan (2011)—she quickly found herself wanting to direct. However, she did not want to mimic the dominant Indian film aesthetic. “I broke the rules because I didn’t know them. I’m not a trained filmmaker, which helped,” she says. Bunny had no dialogue and was made up of mostly long tracking shots. “People weren’t used to seeing Indian films like that,” she says. And yet, her stories found resonance—in Toronto, Berlinale and other major festivals.
As did the works of Sengupta, whose newest short, Nocturnal Burger, is a taut drama set in a police station, unfolding over one night. “It’s about how power operates: across class, gender, age. I like exploring the quiet horror in ordinary spaces,” says Sengupta.
Her filmmaking is rooted in the place and the people. Both Counterfeit Kunku and Nocturnal Burger unfold in specific Mumbai neighbourhoods. “I realised that maybe a lot of people think that international film festivals are a certain type of cinema,” she says. “But when you make very local stories with earnestness, it always has a universal appeal.”
The world’s their stage: Kartiki Gonsalves (left) and Guneet Monga | Reuters
Shruti Ganguly, a New York- and Oslo-based director and producer, says there are now multiple pathways into filmmaking. “You no longer need to wait for the industry to permit you to make something,” she says. “You can begin wherever you are, with whatever tools you have.”
A Sundance alum, Ganguly is drawn to dynamic, emotionally grounded stories. Her upcoming feature “Priya, at 12” is a coming-of-age comedy set in Jackson Heights, about a young girl who is navigating changing family dynamics and evolving cultures. “I find myself in the midst of multiple worlds—as an Indian who grew up in Oman, as a global citizen, living between Oslo and New York,” she says. “Cinema helps me make sense of those intersections.” Her work includes a documentary on disco and jazz legend Asha Puthli and various scripted TV and scripted film projects through her companies honto88 and Prism Entertainment.
Born in Delhi and raised in Oman, Ganguly thought she would be an “investment banker who paints in her spare time”. A personal tragedy led her to filmmaking. “The first film we watched was Pather Panchali by Satyajit Ray (in college in the US),” she says. “It brought together everything I loved—music, imagery, narrative—and it showed me that cinema could have meaning.”
That moment was the spark. Ganguly interned on Indian film sets, read obsessively and watched director commentaries on DVDs. Her formal entry into filmmaking came with a dual MFA/MBA degree from New York University.
Her work includes a documentary on disco legend Asha Puthli and a now-paused Amazon project with Priyanka Chopra Jonas.
Another woman who’s first choice was not filmmaking is Sejal Shah. Much before she was guiding Nawazuddin Siddiqui on the sets of her directorial debut Costao (released in May) she was a journalist at THE WEEK for years. She won the British Chevening Award for Outstanding Young Indian Journalist and had a stint with The Sunday Times in London. That training—asking questions, digging deep, resisting the obvious—shaped her cinematic voice. Her early documentaries, Mangala Tamasha Party and Joginis, won at several festivals including Locarno, Switzerland and Anchorage, Alaska.
As a filmmaker, Shah built her reputation on visceral, layered stories. Costao, on the life of a customs officer in 1990s Goa, struck a chord with critics and audiences alike.
Payal Kapadia | Sajeesh Sankar
In 2018, she founded the production company Bombay Fables with national award-winning screenwriter Bhavesh Mandalia. Their maiden production, Serious Men on Netflix, adapted from Manu Joseph’s novel of the same name, won the Filmfare award for best OTT film. Siddiqui, who was the lead, got an International Emmy nomination.
“In our hierarchy, writers are at the top of the food chain,” says Shah. “We work on projects we believe in, with people we believe in. That’s what has kept us here.”
She was also a producer on Decoupled, Asur 2 and a creative producer for Delhi Crime 2. Her latest is the spy series Saare Jahan se Accha on Netflix.
Though her work spans genres, her litmus test for what works is constant: the story must be culturally sharp, emotionally generous and formally fearless. She thrives on “messy, honest, ego-less collaboration” between writers, directors, actors and editors, all working towards a shared truth.
Speaking of sharing, what binds these women is a shared insistence on creative autonomy. They write, direct, produce and often edit their own work. They craft new visual languages and refuse to explain themselves. “There’s always that one-liner they expect you to give—is this about arranged marriage? Is this about caste?” says Ganguly. “But our lives are so much more textured. We get to have nuance now.”
And that nuance has found a growing audience. International cinema is no longer about crossing over; it’s about belonging everywhere.
For instance, Shuchi Talati, whose Girls Will Be Girls premiered at Sundance last year, is creating defiantly feminist narratives that speak across cultures. Rima Das’s Village Rockstars, which had a hyperlocal yet universal lens, was India’s Oscar entry in 2019 and premiered at TIFF. Das has since been a festival favourite.
The path the current generation is walking on was cleared by pioneers such as Sai Paranjpye and Aparna Sen in India, and Deepa Mehta and Mira Nair more globally. Nair’s Salaam Bombay! (1988) didn’t just premiere at Cannes, it won the Caméra d’Or and earned an Oscar nomination. Deepa Mehta’s Fire, Earth and Water trilogy made her a provocateur with a poetic voice. They were making films as well as statements.
Unfortunately, though, the path they cleared still has thorns. Funding continues to be a struggle, distribution is uneven and navigating Indian and western expectations is exhausting.
Mehta has spoken about being pigeonholed into making “Indian” films, despite working entirely in the Canadian ecosystem. Nair has often had to negotiate the burden of representation, being asked to speak not just as a director, but as a spokesperson for “India”.
“There’s still a certain kind of Indian story that ‘sells’ abroad,” says Sengupta. “I’ve been asked to make my next film in English to ‘broaden my reach’. But I want to tell it in the language my characters speak.”
Adds Ramaswamy: “Every time I make a film that isn’t commercial, I wonder if it will be my last. Because how do you keep affording this kind of filmmaking in India?”
The answer has been to forge their own paths, often working with tight budgets and intimate crews. They are not interested in mimicking the west, but in making the local resonate globally.
“Honestly, if I could not be making films and still sleep at night, I would do that,” says Sengupta. “It’s an incredibly difficult industry. From all the stories that I hear, even from peers, very few have had an easy journey.”
But with the younger audiences hungry for authenticity over gloss, international studios and OTT platforms are beginning to support more women of colour from the global south.
“There’s a kind of openness [with the global community], a willingness to let you be,” says Ganguly. “To hear what you’re trying to say without asking you to first prove your worth.”
Ramaswamy echoes this, adding that what sustains her is not just audience appreciation, but also support from women journalists, critics and programmers. “No man has ever made an encouraging call about my work,” she says bluntly. “Women are the ones creating space for other women—in cinema, in media, in society.”
A recent festival round-up shows more Indian women directors being selected and awarded than their male peers, a sharp shift from the past. At TIFF, Berlinale and Sundance, films by Indian women aren’t just included, they’re celebrated.
“You must figure it out,” says Ganguly. “There’s no template. You need to build a community around you. I think right now is an extraordinary moment. There’s more visibility, more recognition. South Asians are finally being seen not just as stories—but as storytellers.”