After winning an Oscar for The Elephant Whisperers at the 95th Academy Awards this year, Guneet Monga is ready with an action film Kill. Coproducing the film with Dharma, Monga has an interesting story about how she collaborated with Karan Johar’s company. She said, a decade ago, she tried to sell her film Lunchbox at Cannes but no one was interested. Karan was at Cannes with Bombay Talkies, celebrating 100 years of Indian Cinema, so Guneet Monga crashed at his dinner table and said she had sold off her film, a love story, to the whole world minus India and if he would agree to collaborate.  Karan agreed to watch the film and loved it. Rest is history. Now Johar and Monga again, this time for Kill.

Monga confessed that there has been a shift post-Oscars and she feels responsible because decades after she and her contemporaries are gone, coming generations will join the dots on projects, so it is important that they focus on quality content and leave behind a legacy.

We are excited to share that Yash Raj Films (YRF) and Netflix are coming together to form a new multi-year creative partnership to create films and series for audiences in India and across the world. The first projects to come out of the partnership are: The Railway Men, a four-part series starring R Madhavan, Kay Kay Menon, Divyendu Sharma and Babil Khan, which is directed by debutant director Shiv Rawail and the second, Maharaj, is a film marking the debut of actor Junaid Khan, son of Aamir Khan featuring Jaideep Ahlawat and more to be directed by Siddharth P Malhotra. Monica Shergill, head of Netflix said that while YRF was a master of content Netflix was the ultimate streaming channel every producer could dream of – across countries/ language/ generations

More than a decade after her critically-acclaimed debut film Dhobi Ghat, which premiered screened at TIFF, Kiran Rao is back to the festival with Laapata Ladies. Rao said making Laapataa Ladies is a rollercoaster ride, a journey film with so many characters building a world, rural setting was not at all easy. It’s a comedy, a satire but there are songs in the film too so it was challenging. Rao discussed regressive cinema and said it breaks her heart when films like these become superhit because the energies could have been channelised in a different direction but everyone makes their choices.

Laapataa Ladies is produced by Aamir Khan and Rao said their divorce has not come in the way of either parenthood or their friendship. She said that society and relationships are important to both of them and it was Aamir who found this script of this film and suggested that she direct it and she loved the idea.

August is also the month of the rains, the time our domestic staff return to their villages and take stock of their crops. It is their time to bond with their families and wait for the deities to come home. Coming to think of it, India is the only country where deities come home- Lord Krishna in Janmashtami, Elephant God during Ganpati, Mother Goddess during Navratri and finally Lord Vishnu during Diwali. But more about them in my forthcoming blogs

In the olden days Raksha Bandhan in our movies was an occasion to add a song, an action sequence and add a revenge plot to the film.  The narrative has changed now. The sister is no more vulnerable and the brother is not necessarily the provider. Our movies and in our commercials on digital space present a narrative that is not restricted to role playing but a healthy interdependence. The best thing about all these festivals is that they are redefined with time. Raksha Bandhan today is not about brother offering protection to sister but about celebrating a relationship.

My sister and I were trained as little girls to wake up early on the Raksha Bandhan day and have a hair-wash. We wore our best frock because it was our special day. My mother prepared a puja thali with kunku rice and mithai cooked at home for our brother and when it was the right time, she told us to face the sunlight and do the tilak on my brother’s forehead.

In the olden days, my brothers gave all of us a rupee coin that over the years got replaced with a 100 rupee note.

Today, my eldest brother resides in heaven and the second brother resides miles away, across the shore. Old traditions are still followed but with time, the perceptions have altered.