Not enough female directors, producers in the mainstream, we need more, said Roy Kapur Films' Malvika Khatri

Malvika Khatri, producer at Roy Kapur Films.

There are only a handful of female filmmakers and producers in the mainstream cinema and that needs to change, said producer and head of films at Roy Kapur Films (RKF) Malvika Khatri, who has worked on the recently released Deva and Rocket Boys drama series among others.

On sets, "women are a niche" in the role of a director or at the technician level, Khatri said. Usually more women are to be found in the costume design or production design space.

While Khatri has some projects coming up with Alankrita Shrivastava and RKF is also in talks with Zoya Akhtar for a project , she looks forward to working with more female directors.

"We are doing a film with Alankrita Shrivastava and will be potentially working on something with Zoya Akhtar but I would love to have more conversations with women filmmakers and women creators. I can count the number of mainstream directors on my fingers. This is where we should be spoilt for choice," she said.

She added, "On the producer side, the one name that really comes to everyone's mind is Guneet Monga. She has been a really strong champion of young independent female producers.

“But I would like to see that in the mainstream films. Guneet is a role model as an independent film producer, but when I think of the mainstream, is there somebody who has stood out without coming from a film family background? I have to pause to think. On the other hand, in the West, you have a lot more examples. In Hollywood, there are so many female producers who are making big studio commercial mainstream films."

Women at the helm

The producer recalled how the 2019 movie The Sky is Pink, starring Priyanka Chopra and Farhan Akhtar, which won critical acclaim, came into being.

"We had always admired Shonali Bose who directed Margarita with a Storm. That was a film that had really moved us. She came to us with this film (The Sky is Pink) which needed a  strong female protagonist who plays from age 20 to 50. Bose said she will need somebody who's a really good actor and that she doesn't know if it can be a mainstream film. We spoke to her and said, why not? Why do you not think this will be a mainstream film? She told us that she doesn't know if there are female actors out there who would want to sink so deep into a character," she said.

The first person to come in mind to play the lead was Priyanka Chopra.

"In the very first narration, I remember Shonali went to meet Priyanka in New York and Priyanka said she is on. I feel if we were not involved, maybe Shonali would have made it as a more art house cinema because she had this roadblock in her mind that a mainstream actor won't do such a film," Khatri  said.

Even at the box office, the needle is moving. There is a mindset that a movie with a female protagonist will not attract male audiences and they don't want to put their money into such projects.

"For a long time, the woman who was at the centre of the film story was often just a love interest or a sidekick. Today, we've seen films where she's the hero or the anti-hero like Gangubai Kathiawadi, Mrunal Thakur in Sita Ramam or Crew. Through our interactions with audiences across India, we feel they want fresh powerful narratives. And they don't care whether it's a female-led story or a male-led story as long as it's something that holds their attention," she said.

Will a female-led film guarantee box office success? Absolutely, said Khatri.

Alia Bhatt-starrer Gangubai Kathiawadi did a global box office business of more than Rs 200 crore, while Crew, which has Tabu, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Kriti Sanon in the lead, collected over Rs 150 crore.

Siddharth Roy Kapur's RKF has four projects in the pipeline including one for OTT and three for cinema halls.

"The four projects are for the next 12 months. There's also some interesting stuff happening internationally on the series side and those projects also have very strong female characters. We'll be partnered with Hollywood Studios for those," Khatri said.

A balancing act

Looking to balance creativity with commerce, Khatri found her calling in the business of films.

It was a bit of a herd mentality when she went to a business school in the US, she luckily ended up doing investment banking in the media and telecom side where she learnt the ropes of content business, Khatri said.

"I got the opportunity to work at Disney India, in their corporate strategy team. I really wanted to be where the action was, which was in the creation of content,” she said. When Disney acquired UTV, Khatri started working with Siddharth Roy who was the head of UTV studios then. She worked with international distribution in the creative team and production. When Roy started his company at the end of 2016, “it was a startup so he wanted somebody who had a bit of experience across all the different verticals of the entertainment business. And that's when I really jumped into full-on producer mode," Khatri said.

Her typical day involves listening to scripts or managing hundreds of people on the sets from actors to technicians.

"… it is a story or a script narration or talking to Netflix and Amazon trying to do a licensing deal. At the same time, I'll be negotiating an actor's commercials or managing a shoot which is a lot of people management because we are working with so many talented people, often 100, 200, 300 people on any given day on shoot," Khatri said.

It's a balancing act and she learned it best from Kapur, Khatri said.