A yr after founding Ladies in Movie India, Guneet Monga Kapoor – whose “The Elephant Whisperers” took the Academy Award for Finest Documentary Quick Movie on the 2023 Oscars – was at Cannes with 4 scholarship recipients in tow and a producing slate that alerts a deliberate transfer into style cinema, women-led franchises and, ultimately, gaming.
Monga Kapoor introduced two students to the Cannes Film Market‘s Producers Community and two to its Affect Lab, by a proper tie-up with the market. The initiative, backed at Cannes this yr by Jio Studios and clothes model Rareism – a part of the Home of Uncommon group – obtained greater than 200 functions for the 4 locations. Ladies in Movie India, launched throughout Cannes 2025, has reached 3,500 members in its first twelve months.
“We are trying to build skill development enhancement and a bridge into other markets,” Monga Kapoor tells Selection. The group runs month-to-month workshops in partnership with So Home, alongside resilience workshops led by life coach Chetna Chakravarthy, held on-line over six-week cycles in teams of 20 to 30 individuals per batch. Six initiatives and 6 girls had been taken to the Toronto market final yr; one, Katyayani Kumar’s “Sons of the River,” has since been chosen by Movie Unbiased, Monga Kapoor says, whereas Paromita Dhar’s “Ulta” positioned second within the Co-Manufacturing Options competitors on the WAVES Movie Bazaar in Goa. Monga Kapoor says she hopes to develop a script lab and a producers breakfast collection in India, funding and staffing allowing.
On her personal slate, her comedy thriller “Udta Teer,” a co-production with Dharma Productions starring Ayushmann Khurrana and Sara Ali Khan, is about for a Sept. 11 launch. An as-yet-unnamed Tamil-language movie – the primary venture she has financed outright quite than produced with out fairness – directed by Karthik Subbaraj below her Jio Studios deal. The movie is in post-production and can carry a rating by Ilaiyaraaja, marking the composer’s 1,540th movie. A dwell orchestral session with 80 musicians was recorded in Prague. “Kill 2” can be within the works, and Monga Kapoor says three movies will go to the ground inside the yr. An additional slate of female-led style photos – together with an atmospheric pure catastrophe movie and a slasher – is within the deal-closing stage.
She is forthright concerning the market dynamics behind the style shift. Streamer acquisition spending has contracted: JioHotstar has redirected assets towards cricket, Zee has slowed its commissioning, and Prime Video’s content material slates are locked by 2027 and 2028. Theatrical audiences, she argues, are at present gravitating towards heightened, franchise-driven fare.
“As a producer, I always sit between commerce and the arts,” she says. “Unfortunately, dramas do break out far and fewer.” She provides that even status drama now sometimes requires streaming backing earlier than manufacturing can begin.
The longer-term purpose is to construct women-led franchises that stretch into gaming and digital manufacturing – two areas she says she is actively finding out after attending market shows at Cannes. “I’m figuring out how to build that and put some equity behind it,” she says of gaming.
Monga Kapoor says she stays formidable about returning to Cannes – and at some point competing for the Palme d’Or. Her earlier Cannes credit embrace “Peddlers,” which screened in Critics’ Week in 2012, “The Lunchbox” in the identical part the next yr, and “Masaan,” which competed in Un Sure Regard in 2015. “I am ambitious, and I’m not scared about that ambition,” she says.
