At the just-concluded El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt, the long links between the cinemas of the North African country, which boasts the Arab world’s oldest film industry, and India, the world’s biggest filmmaking nation, was limited to just one film. Girls Will Be Girls, the Hindi and English language film by first-time director Shuchi Talati, still stood out for its raw energy and a riveting story of a teenager discovering desire and romance.
Competing for the Egyptian film festival’s El Gouna Golden Star, the event’s top prize, with powerful cinematic portrayals of the sharp vicissitudes of life in a conflict-ridden world from countries like Lebanon, Palestine and Algeria, Girls Will Be Girls was symbolic of the rise of the Indian independent cinema in 2024. The year of success, in fact, had tellingly begun with Talati’s debut feature itself, at America’s Sundance Film Festival in January where it scooped two top awards— Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition category and World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting to Preeti Panigrahi, the film’s 15-year-old protagonist.
The Sundance festival this year also gave away one of its top documentary awards to an Indian film, Nocturnes by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan, a movie about moths set in the Himalayas like Girls Will Be Girls. Nocturnes won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Craft, continuing the success of Indian documentaries at the North American festival in the past, for Shaunak Sen’s Oscar-nominated All That Breathes on communal polarisation, Writing With Fire by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh on caste system, also nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar, and Against The Tide by Sarvnik Kaur on climate change.
“Girls Will Be Girls is a powerful example of the creative renaissance happening in Indian indie cinema today,” says Raman Chawla, a senior programmer at El Gouna Film Festival, who has previously worked with the erstwhile Cinefan Asian Film Festival in Delhi. “Its participation at El Gouna Film Festival competition is a testament to the growing international recognition of Indian filmmakers who are unafraid to challenge norms and push boundaries,” adds Chawla. “This film, with its bold exploration of young female sexuality and deeply personal storytelling, showcases the unique voices that are shaping the future of Indian cinema. We are proud to present such fearless works that continue to resonate across cultural divides.”
Also in October, another Indian independent film project from the Kumaon hills in Uttarakhand made it to the top of international film production by winning a place at the prestigious screenwriting residency programme of the Cannes Film Festival. Nainital-based Diwa Shah, whose debut film Bahadur The Brave in Hindi and Nepali languages about the migrant crisis during the coronavirus pandemic won the New Directors Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival last year, was selected to the Cannes writing residency for her new project, Chab, a story of Tibetan refugees in India. Shah became only the second Indian filmmaker to be selected to the Cannes residency, which was founded in 2000 and had past residents like Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, whose Capernaum was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2019, Israeli director Nadav Lapid, who was the head of the jury at the International Film Festival of India, Goa two years ago, and Hungary’s László Nemes who won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for Son of Saul in 2016. Mumbai-born Payal Kapadia, the winner of the Cannes Grand Prix for All We Imagine As Light was the first Indian to win the Cannes residency, for new filmmakers working on their first or second feature films, for her project on the same film. “The script for All We Imagine As Light was still very fragile when I applied to La Résidence,” says Kapadia, whose Grand Prix victory in Cannes in May this year for the film marks a turning point of Indian independent cinema on the global stage.
The year 2024 also saw successes for Bengaluru-born Raam Reddy’s The Fable, an official selection at the Berlin film festival this year that follows his much-acclaimed Locarno festival debut, Thithi, in Kannada in 2016, and In the Belly of a Tiger by Jatla Siddartha, about rural poverty and farmer distress, also a Berlin festival selection this year. Film and Television Institute of India, Pune alumnus Maisam Ali’s debut feature, Ladakhi and Hindi language film Beqayaam (In Retreat) premiered in the ACID section at the Cannes festival this year, the first time an Indian film has ever featured in the festival sidebar.
While other major films set in India like Santosh directed by Meerut-born British-Indian director Sandhya Suri, the winner of the Best Short Film prize at the Toronto festival for The Field in 2018, have raised the standards for the Indian indie, funding challenges still curtail the growth of independent cinema in the country. Santosh, a BBC Films production chosen as the United Kingdom’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar this year, and All We Imagine As Light have all benefited from foreign funding. “I don’t know if many of the movies I grew up with can be made today. Everything is decided by economics. Either you have to look for funds outside the country like Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light and others, like Masaan or it has to be on a very very small budget,” says actor-director Nandita Das, the president of the feature competition jury at El Gouna Film Festival this year. “There are not enough Independent films that are being made in the country. For every good independent film that is being made, I am sure there are many that would never see the light of day,” adds Das, whose independent production, Zwigato, which premiered at the Toronto festival in 2022, was released on OTT this month.
“Some Indian films with Western co-production are still genuinely Indian, the best example being All We Imagine As Light, as opposite to others that obviously are shaped by the so-called international taste and are in danger of losing authenticity,” explains French critic Jean-Michel Frodon, a former editor-in-chief of the iconic French film magazine, Cahiers du Cinema, who chaired a panel on emerging filmmakers at El Gouna Film Festival.