Ali Fazal interview: Girls Will Be Girls producer on the making of a mother-daughter love story

It’s not uncommon for actors currently working in Hindi cinema to turn producers as a way to shape their filmographies. But it is certainly rare to have actors turn into ambition-minded producers in order to back a plucky coming-of-age narrative that disrupts convention and confronts the systemic societal repression of female sexual agency, without resorting to any creative compromise. Girls Will Be Girls for instance, is helmed by a debutante, the film unfolds largely in English, and it stars Kani Kusruti — an actor who frequently works in Malayalam cinema — opposite Preeti Panigrahi, a 22-year-old newcomer.

A film worth the global stage

Within the Bollywood rulebook for box office, such a film would have been labelled as a risk, perhaps not one worth backing for a debut production. Yet, Fazal remembers being unfazed. Just like he knew that Guddu Pandit would make a place in the hearts and minds of audiences, he had a similar inkling with Girls Will Be Girls. “We were very confident that we have something with us that would hold its own on the global stage,” Fazal tells The Federal over a Zoom call. A large part of that confidence stemmed from how Fazal felt when he read Talati’s script for the first time. “It was pure jealousy,” Fazal says with a laugh, adding, “I was jealous of those characters and the potential actors who get to play these emotions out. It’s just so refreshing to find narratives that can draw you in, that can almost predict and pique your attention at the right nuances, in what is essentially a mother-daughter love story.”

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It’s high praise coming from an actor like Fazal, who is prone to inspecting and investigating any work that he has any creative control over, before letting it out into the world. Take for instance, Shujaat Saudagar’s The Underbug, a film that has the actor essay dual roles as actor and producer. A tense and volatile chamber drama about Muslim identity, The Underbug premiered at Slamdance Film Festival in January 2023. When I bring up the actor’s commanding lead turn in the film and express surprise at the film’s unreleased status, Fazal lets slip that he might have had a hand in delaying the release, “I thought we could have slightly fixed the film’s ending before putting it out. Then again, I don’t know if India is ready for it.” A month after The Underbug’s Slamdance, Netflix shelved Dibakar Banerjee’s Tees, a dystopian film that trains its gaze on three generations of a Kashmiri Muslim family grappling with religious intolerance. Both these developments are not necessarily related but they do point toward a film landscape tightly dictated by government-enabled censorship.

Finding a home for Girls Will Be Girls

That’s not to suggest that mounting Girls Will Be Girls, which wowed at Sundance Film Festival last year, where it picked up two awards, hasn’t been a thorny and demanding experience. As producers, Fazal and Chadha fought tooth and nail to get the film running off the ground. There was the time-consuming casting process — Fazal remembers going through “90 odd audition tapes” sitting in his van while filming the second season of Mirzapur before ultimately zeroing in on Panigrahi. Then, there were the absurd questions from financiers they met that cast another shadow over the film’s future.

Funding any film in India that strays from mainstream is a back-breaking task. So you can imagine the difficulties that abound when you’re a producer trying to raise funds for a film while planning your own wedding. “There was a period when we were getting married — and anyone and go back and look — where we have appeared in endless digital advertisements to get money for the film.” For anyone asking, Fazal and Chadha claimed that they were raising money for their wedding, when in fact, it was actually for Girls Will Be Girls which at that time was on floors in Dehradun.

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Still, the challenges haven’t diminished even after the unanimous acclaim that has come the film’s way both in India and abroad. By his own admission, Fazal and Chadha are still working out the specifics of an Indian release for the film, one that would be a “right fit” for the sensitive film. A majority of Indian audiences for instance, are yet to see Girls Will Be Girls — a travesty for such a flawless debut. Fazal, on his part, is confident of leveraging his cachet as an actor, to find a home for Girls Will Be Girls.

Seeing the bigger picture

A large part of Fazal’s perseverance as a producer, his feeling of accomplishment at being able to serve Talati’s purpose on Girls Will Be Girls despite not being the “richest producers,” stems from his observations as an actor. He admits that their decision to turn producers was reflective of the frustration they felt at the crushing reality of being a part of a landscape that habitually sits on subversive scripts and writers. Especially “when mediocre films are being made and championed regularly in our industry.” The goal at Pushing Buttons Studios, their production house, is to back genre-agnostic films. “I want to champion good writing. It is the only way to get past the ‘acting ho payegi ki nahi?’ (whether one would be able to act or not) mentality.”

Girls Will Be Girls is certainly the beginning. Fazal and Chadha have a diverse upcoming slate as producers: a crime-thriller that follows a paparazzi photographer, a musical comedy, an animated short, and a fantasy drama helmed by Kamal Swaroop. If there is one thing Fazal is adamant about course-correcting as a producer, it is distancing himself from the Hindi film industry’s predisposition for being content with doing the bare minimum.

By his own admission, neither Chadha nor Fazal are in any hurry to cast themselves in the films they choose to back. Last year, when Fazal was in the middle of writing something for himself, he experienced something that can only be described as the ultimate producer litmus test. Somewhere during the process, he started picturing Jaideep Ahlawat in the role that he had meant to be for him. Once he got over the initial disappointment as an actor, he switched sides, quickly realising that the reason Ahlawat came to his mind might be a sign that he could be a better fit for the film.

“Sometimes, the narrative is so strong that it finds its own face,” says Fazal. “I suppose as a producer, my job is to be objective and see the bigger picture. I don’t want to live a life of self-obsession. We have seen enough of that.”