FPJ 96th Anniversary: Honoring Indian Women In Cinema Shaping Global Entertainment

In May this year, Deepika Padukone was named as a cinema personality who is defining the future of global mainstream entertainment by Deadline Hollywood on its ‘Global Disruptors 2024’ list. Meanwhile, actor Anasuya Sengupta and filmmaker Payal Kapadia won top honours at the holy grail of world cinema, the Cannes Film Festival.

Who run the world? Desi girls! While there are a ton of honourable mentions, as part of this years anniversary theme this year, we shine a spotlight on a select few Wonder Womaniya of Indian cinema who have made their mark on the global pulpit. Be inspired!

Rohini Hattangadi

The first Indian, and the only Indian actress to date, to win the prestigious British Academy Film Award or BAFTA. She won the honour for portraying, on screen, 50 years of Kasturba Gandhi’s life in Lord Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning seminal biopic Gandhi’ (1982). She was 31 years old then. She had, up until then, mainly worked in Marathi theatre and appeared in a few movies. Now she was playing off an actor of the calbre of Ben Kingsley and had to match the entire international cast, step for step.

As Attenborough’s Kasturba, Hattangadi immortalised herself on cinema’s world stage.

Sooni Taraporevala

Write what you know, they said. Screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala tore up that brief. Long before going global was a thing in India, Taraporevala wrote the screenplay of Salaam Bombay!. It became India’s second film to be nominated at the Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category. To date, the film enjoys a 93 per cent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

She went on to write commissioned screenplays for top studios like Disney, HBO, Warner Brothers and also wrote critically-acclaimed films including Mississippi Masala and The Namesake.

Perhaps Taraporevala has always been telling stories she knows well. Stories of the human condition that could be translated to screen only by a deeply empathetic writer.

Gitanjali Rao

In 2006, Rao’s debut animated short, Printed Rainbow, written, animated, produced and directed by her, became the first Indian animation film selected at Cannes. She had spent three years painting the film frame by frame. It won three prestigious awards at the festival and made it to the 2008 Oscar Shortlist. In 2019, her debut animated feature, Bombay Rose, premiered as the Opening Film at the 34th Venice Film Festival Critic’s Week. It screened at more than 40 festivals and won four awards. In 2018, she made her acting debut in October, earning a Filmfare Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Now that makes her a quintuple threat… for now!

Guneet Monga

Disruptor. Dreamer. Doer, doing it her way. As a young producer in her 20s, Monga, dressed in saris and coloured her hair grey so investors would take her seriously. Despite the many challenges, she took an unconventional route to success, away from mainstream Bollywood, choosing to tell impactful stories through documentaries and indie films.

Monga’s dogged perseverance and belief in herself earned her two Academy Awards even before she turned 40. By then, she had already worked on 30 films as producer.

With global success comes photo shoots in fashion magazines. Monga too stunned in chic designer wear in the May 2024 edition of Elle India. She wore her hair jet black.

Payal Kapadia

Rebel with a cause, without a pause. In 2015, the then-FTII student-filmmaker led a protest against the then-chairman-appointee of the Film and Television Institute of India. The institute filed an FIR against her. Undaunted, Kapadia focused on realising her cinema dream.

In 2017, her documentary Afternoon Clouds became the only Indian film selected for the 70th Cannes Film Festival. In 2021, she won the prestigious Golden Eye Award for Best Documentary at Cannes for A Night of Knowing Nothing. In 2024, Kapadia made movie history. Her debut feature, All We Imagine As Light, won the Grand Prix, the second most prestigious award at the festival. She became the first Indian filmmaker to win this top honour. Soon after, her alma mater took to social media to congratulate her.

World’s the stage!

Call it what you want — the zeitgeist, the advent of technology, or just plain big business. Cinema today has morphed into a globally distributed product.

Each, a badass Bollywood star, living in the hearts of a billion-plus people in one of the world’s biggest consumer markets. It was only a matter of time before the world needed them. And they? They wanted the world.

Priyanka Chopra

Chopra did not wait for her audition call from Hollywood. Using her self-made machinery, she built a direct route into living rooms in the West. From music videos to a hit TV show to starring in 2021’s ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ with Keanu Reeves, her list of achievements is yet being written because she has only just begun, guns blazing.

Deepika Padukone

Padukone, meanwhile, set the global box office ablaze with her turn in the Vin Diesel-starrer XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. Like Chopra, Padukone too has presented at the Oscars, attended the Met Gala and appeared on top American TV talk shows.

Alia Bhatt

Not to be left behind, Bhatt pulled into the City of Angels with the American spy action thriller Heart of Stone. And she attended the Met Gala too! Buzz is that Alia is set to star in her second Hollywood project… picture abhi baaki hai!

Published on: Friday, July 19, 2024, 08:00 AM IST