Richa Chadha moderated an interesting session at Waterfront Indie Film Festival (WIFF) last week featuring Shoojit Sircar, Rajat Kapoor, Deepa Gehlot and Sridhar Rangayan where they spoke about the challenges of making an independent cinema.
At one point in the conversation, Richa Chadha told Shoojit Sircar, “You have a producer like Ronnie Lahiri, who is your sounding board and who (backs your vision) is so important. The need for such producers is very important, who believe in you and stand by you through and through.”
She then asked all the panelists, “Why is it that the biggest head honchos of global networks keep selecting some or the other MBA to be the deciding authority to select films? They are like ‘Yeh mere platform pe jaayegi’ or ‘This suits my algorithm’. We have access and we meet people from all over the world. Why is there not even one person from the industry who says, ‘I know VCs, I know hedge funds, this is the risk, this is the monetizable streams of revenue…here’s Rs. 100 crores, you can give 10 films or 3 films or 100 films. This is the money you have to return’. For instance, there’s a Chanel Grant that gives you Rs. 2 crores. You don’t even have to pay that money back. It's soft money. Where is that person? Why doesn’t that person exist?”
After a brief pause, Deepa Gehlot answered, “There is no person but an organization called NFDC (National Film Development Corporation). It was meant for this purpose. I don’t know where that purpose has gone now.”
Richa Chadha revealed, “The NFDC people would argue that they still exist. They even recently announced the line-up for their Film Bazaar. They would say that they are trying to do all that they can. However, I would like to inform on this note that the NFDC promised us X amount for Girls Will Be Girls (2024) and gave us only half of it! When I told my co-producers, they told me, ‘Sarkar se paisa nikalna bahut mushkil hai. Woh sab kuch pehle hi le leti hai’. (This is) just my little bit of frustration.”
Girls Will Be Girls starred Preeti Panigrahi, Kani Kusruti, and Kesav Binoy Kiron and was well received at more than 20 film festivals, including the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it had its premiere. The coming-of-age finally premiered on Amazon Prime Video on December 18.
Also Read: Following the success of Girls Will Be Girls, Ali Fazal to back more women-led stories
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