How feminism, not Bollywood, brought global audiences to Indian cinema in 2024

In 2024, as Bollywood struggled to find its place, smaller films by Indian women telling nuanced stories made headlines in the country and around the world.

In May, the film by Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia Everything we imagine as light made history by winning the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival.

In the months since, All We Imagine As Light has become an independent film juggernaut, sweeping film festivals and awards circuits. It has been considered the Best International Film by prestigious associations such as the New York Film Critics Circle and the Toronto Film Critics Association. It also earned two Golden Globe nominations, including Kapadia’s nomination for best director.

It also appears on several lists of the best films of the year, including 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 on Netflix’s top 10 list in India and was chosen as the country’s official Oscar entry (a controversial decision). Laapataa Ladies did not make the Academy’s shortlist. What did succeed was the Hindi film Santosh, by British-Indian director Sandhya Suri, which had been chosen as the United Kingdom’s submission to the Oscars.

Is this sudden wave of success for Indian films an aberration or a long-awaited shift in global consciousness?

“It’s a culmination of both,” says film critic Shubhra Gupta, noting that these films were not “made overnight.”

For example, Shuchi Talati, director of Girls Will Be Girls, and his co-producer Richa Chadha were in college together when they came up with the idea for the film. “They’ve been working on it for years,” says Gupta.

“It’s pure coincidence that 2024 became the year these films were released, sparking conversations among everyone.”

This lucky lineup has been a cinematic dream. The global impact of these films is rooted in their quality and exploration of universal themes such as 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 in Mumbai navigate empathy, resilience and human connection. The narrative delves into themes of loneliness and the socio-political landscape, particularly the scrutiny of inter-religious relations between Hindus and Muslims as seen with the character Anu (Divya Prabha) and her bond with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon).

Kapadia told the BBC that while the women in his films are financially independent, they still face limitations in their personal lives, particularly when it comes to matters of love.

“To me, love in India is very political…women seem to have a lot of the so-called honor of family and the protection of caste lineage. So if you marry someone who is of a different religion or a different caste, “This 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 boarding school in the Himalayas and her fractured relationship with her mother, Anila, who struggles with their own vulnerabilities and unresolved emotions.

“It’s the kind of coming-of-age film we don’t make in India at all,” says Gupta. “He looks at women with a very empathetic and very warm gaze.”

“The era in which people experience emotions with and without their body, their mind, that exploration but without infantilizing the experience, was never part of conventional Indian cinema,” he adds.

Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies did not perform well at the box office but got good reviews from viewers and critics. At a BAFTA screening in London this month, Rao described the current moment as “really special for Indian women,” and expressed hope that a wave of such stories will continue.

Her film is a satirical comedy about two newlywed brides who accidentally swap each other on a train because of their veils. It offers a sharp commentary on patriarchy, identity and gender roles, a departure from decades of conventional male-centric Indian films.

“Many of us, who have very patriarchal thinking, are like that because that’s how we were raised,” Bollywood star Aamir Khan, co-producer of the film, said after the screening. “But we must be understanding, at least try to help each other even to get out of this kind of thinking.”

This year’s biggest surprise came from the United Kingdom, which selected the Hindi film Santosh, directed by British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri, as its Oscar contender. Filmed entirely in India over 44 days, it featured a mostly female crew. Santosh, starring Indian actors Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajbhar, was co-produced by people and companies across the UK, India, Germany and France.

The film is inherently an Indian story about violence against women, set as a tense thriller.

Goswami says the success of Santosh and All We Imagine as Light points to the merging of boundaries and expansion of film industries, creating space for cross-pollination and exchange.

“We often think that these Indian films require a (specific) cultural context, but they don’t. Any film driven by emotion will resonate universally, regardless of its origins,” he told the BBC.

Three of the films, All We Imagine as Light, Girls Will Be Girls and Santosh, share a common trait: they are co-productions between countries.

Goswami agrees that this could be a formula for the future.

“With a French producer, for example, a film has the opportunity to be seen by a French audience who can follow that producer or the film industry in general. This is how it becomes more accessible and relevant globally,” he says.

Even in Bollywood, some women-led films have seen huge success this year. Stree 2, a horror comedy about a mysterious woman fighting a monster that kidnaps free-thinking women, was the second biggest hit of the year and played in theaters 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 most sought-after TV shows in the world. year on Google.

Its success seems to indicate a growing appetite for these types of stories, and its broad appeal demonstrates that mainstream cinema can address important themes without sacrificing entertainment value.

Despite systemic challenges, 2024 has highlighted the global power of Indian women’s voices and the demand for diverse stories. The push could be crucial for the Indian film industry to get its independent films into wider distribution and pave the way for a more diverse and equitable film landscape.