“Women are God’s apology to the world for making men.” You may have heard this saying countless times. We worship female deities, claim to respect women deeply, and even make symbolic gestures like having women’s names first in film credits. But how much of this ideology truly translates into real life. How much of it is actually practiced on ground level? That is exactly what we’re unpacking here, who tells the story, and where do women truly stand within it in Hindi cinema?
Take a moment and question yourself. If someone asks you about your favourite filmmaker in Hindi cinema, how many of them will be women and how many men. And not just that, but think, how quickly would you think of a female filmmaker? Would you even be able to name five women who are part of the mainstream?
It somehow feels like a systemic failure that we don’t have many female filmmakers. That if I’m wishing to count on my fingertips, I’d probably not be able to make to even twenty, and I’ll have to search various films to find out apart from, of course, a very few, which are part of mainstream, like Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti, Farah Khan, Kiran Rao, Meghna Gulzar, or Gauri Shinde.
One huge pioneer for women filmmakers was Sai Paranjpye. She managed to make a name for herself right in the middle where men had always ruled. She broke ground by creating popular and critically acclaimed comedies in the 1970s and 1980s in a male-dominated industry. You can measure the popularity of one of her films, Chashme Buddoor, by the fact that it was remade by David Dhawan.
But the hidden gems of today still remain hidden. Filmmakers like Rima Das, Nandita Das, Alankrita Shrivastava have created such wonderful and meaningful cinema. Yet, how many people from the general audience know of their work, is my question, or rather my wonder. Some may have heard of Shonali Bose in passing. But do they really know the kind of films she’s made other than The Sky is Pink? However, once you are through watching films like Village Rockstars, Lipstick Under My Burkha, Margarita with a Straw, Amu, Manto, Fire, Firaaq, Zwigato, you will surely wonder why these are not in the mainstream. And there are so many more.
As an aspiring filmmaker myself, I would want to look up to women filmmakers. And because I have consciously exposed myself to this world, I know of the hidden but pathbreaking women filmmakers, to me at least. But somebody like my dad would not. And when pleading with him about a career change, how is he expected to be convinced when he only knows of Karan Johar, Rohit Shetty, Yash Chopra, Rajkumar Hirani, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali. It’s not his fault that he only knows these many and all men. It’s because they’re the ones that are mostly covered in top news or media channels.
The question arises, are we still living in a patriarchy? Of course we are. Is the lack of visibility due to the patriarchy within the industry? Most likely it is. When you think about who’s at the top of the food chain of a film production world; well, like every other field, it is a man. And is that man deciding who is going to be working in the film industry? Probably is. And probably that is the very reason why there are so few female filmmakers, because everyone worries if an unknown face of a female with only talent and good work backing her, will be able to make money. And if no is the answer, then she isn’t worth the investment.
For women, especially those coming from the outside world, the challenges multiply, because the well-known female filmmakers that we know of are either mostly or all from a film background, in the sense that they have connections. And when you don’t have those, it’s more likely that you’ll be an independent filmmaker or just have a lower outreach rather than somebody who would be in the mainstream.
And if you are an outsider and you eagerly want to be part of films that are in the mainstream, you have to make connections and that is how it works. You can’t solely depend on your films and how great they are. They will be recognized, they will probably even receive awards, but how much will they be talked about in the general public is based on the media channels, and the media channels cover those parts that are glamorous and that sell, rather than that are critically acclaimed.
This imbalance in the industry also affects the kind of stories we see on screen. With fewer women behind the camera, authentic female perspectives are limited. While male directors can, should, and do tell women’s stories, one such recent one is the film Assi, written and directed by Anubhav Sinha. Similarly, a female is free to write male stories. However, the vastness of subjects that a female can originate for women’s stories will be larger because they have seen that world. They have lived it. And hence, a female viewer will have more options to choose from.
So, the question remains, are we still operating within a system that limits women’s visibility and voice? The answer is not simple, but it is difficult to ignore. Because the issue is not just about talent. It is about access, trust, and the structures that decide whose stories are worth telling, and whose are not. Until those structures shift, the imbalance will continue to exist, not always loudly, but persistently. And perhaps the first step is not just to acknowledge this imbalance, but to question it, consistently, until the silence that follows “name a woman filmmaker” is no longer there.
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