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

In 2024, when Bollywood was struggling to find its footing, small films by Indian women telling nuanced stories made headlines across the country and around the world.

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

In the months that have passed since then, All We Imagine As Light has grown into a major indie film circuit, sweeping film festivals and winning awards. Prestigious associations, including the New York Film Critics Circle and the Toronto Film Critics Association, recognized it as the best international film. It also received two Golden Globe nominations, including Best Director for Ms. Kapadia.

It is also included in several lists of the best films of the year, including the BBC and 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 in the top 10 list of Netflix in India and was selected as an official Oscar contender (controversial solution). Laapataa Ladies were not shortlisted for the Academy. This was done by Sandhya Suri’s British-Indian Hindi film Santosh, which was selected as the UK’s Oscar contender.

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

“It’s a culmination of both,” says film critic Shubhra Gupta, stressing that these films weren’t “made overnight.”

For example, Shuchi Talati, the 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,” Gupta says.

“It’s pure coincidence that 2024 happened to be the year these films came out, sparking joint conversations.”

This happy alignment was a cinematic dream. The global impact of these films is due to 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 Indian cinema.

Filmed in Hindi, Marathi and Malayalam, All We Imagine as Light explores empathy, resilience and human connection among three migrant women in Mumbai. The story delves into themes of loneliness and the socio-political landscape, particularly an analysis of Hindu-Muslim interfaith relations in the person of the character Anu (Divya Prabha) and her relationship with Shiaz (Hridhu Harun).

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

“For me, love in India is very political… women seem to have a lot of so-called family honor and caste protection. So if she marries someone who belongs to a different religion or caste, to me it’s really a way of controlling and infantilizing women,” she says.

Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls explores female adolescence, rebellion and generational conflict through the story of a 16-year-old girl at a boarding school in the Himalayas and her fractured relationship with her mother, Anila, who struggles with her vulnerability and unresolved emotions.

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

“An era where people are emoting with and without their bodies, their minds, that exploration, but without infantilizing the experience — that’s never been a part of mainstream Indian cinema,” she adds.

Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies didn’t do well at the box office but received warm reviews from the audience and critics. At the BAFTAs in London this month, Ms Rao described the current moment as “really special for women in India”, hoping for a continued wave of such stories.

Her film is a satirical comedy about two young brides who are accidentally swapped on a train because of a veil. It offers a sharp commentary on patriarchy, identity and gender roles, a departure from decades of mainstream male-centric Indian films.

“Many of us who are very patriarchal in our thinking are often that way because we were raised that way,” said Bollywood star Aamir Khan, a co-producer of the film, after the screening. “But we have to understand, at least try to help each other, even to get out of that mindset.”

The biggest surprise this year was the UK, which selected the Hindi film Santosh by British-Indian director Sandhya Suri as a candidate for the Oscars. Filmed entirely in India in 44 days, it featured an all-female cast. Starring Indian actors Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajbhar, Santosh was produced by people and companies from the UK, India, Germany and France.

Essentially, the film is an Indian story of violence against women, unfolding in the form of a tense thriller.

Goswami says the success of Santosh and All We Imagine as Light points to the merging of boundaries and expansion of the film industry, 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 based on emotion will resonate universally, regardless of its origin,” she told the BBC.

Three of the films – “All We Imagine as Light”, “Girls Will Be Girls” and “Santash” – have another thing in common: they are co-productions in different countries.

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

“For example, with a French producer, the film gets the chance to be seen by a French audience who may follow that producer or the wider film industry. That’s how it becomes more accessible and relevant around the world,” she says.

Even in Bollywood, some films directed by women have been huge successes this year. Streak 2, a horror comedy about a mysterious woman who battles a monster that kidnaps free-spirited women, became the second biggest hit of the year and has been in theaters for months.

On streaming platforms, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s lavish Netflix series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, about misogyny and exploitation in the lives of courtesans in pre-independence India, was one of Google’s most popular TV shows of the year.

Their success seems to indicate a growing appetite for such stories, their broad appeal demonstrating that mainstream cinema can address important themes without sacrificing entertainment value.

Despite the systemic challenges, 2024 showed the global power of women’s voices from India and the demand for diverse stories. The momentum could be crucial for the Indian film industry in getting its independent films more widely distributed and pave the way for a more diverse and equitable film space.