Indian director, Shuchi Talati’s feature debut, Girls Will Be Girls (2024) is set in a mixed-gender boarding school in the Indian Himalayas. 16-year-old Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) receives the honour of being elected the first female “Head Prefect.” As the official class speaker, part of her responsibility is to stand up in front of the other students and read the pledge of allegiance to old-fashioned Indian traditions. Mira, however, risks expulsion when she begins dating Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), who is two years her senior. Determined to embrace her sexual awakening, Mira’s perfect grades drop, and her mother, Anila’s (Kni Kusruti) interest in Sri, complicates their already fractious relationship.

Girls Will Be Girls is a continuation of the New York-based filmmaker’s interest in gender and sexuality, specifically women exploring and expressing their sexual identity. Talati’s first short film Mae & Ash (2012), centred on a couple confronting the realities of an open-relationship, when the woman they invited into their bed stays for breakfast. In A Period Piece (2019), a couple consummate their relationship one afternoon, but it’s complicated by bloodstains on the lounge sofa.

When I connected with Talati virtually to speak with her about Girls Will Be Girls, she soon pointed out the bookshelf on the far wall behind her. Studying English Literature, she might have expected, even wanted to write a novel, but life had alternative plans for Talati, whose feature debut won Best Film at the 2024 Transilvania International Film Festival, and the Audience Award (World Cinema Dramatic) at Sundance 2024.

Sat with a cup of in hand, Talati’s eyes gave her a striking, almost intimidating gaze. She listens intently and answers thoughtfully, revealing her intent not to make an “issue” film. Instead, she wants to offer the audience as close to a lived experience as possible through 16-year-old Mira. What’s captivating about the conversation, is when she shows a willingness to express, if not doubts, then questions, that reveals her humility.

…

.

Paul Risker – Considering you originally intended to write prose, how do you approach cinematic storytelling?

Shuchi Talati – I think about the audience a lot when I’m making a film. I often say I want the experience of watching my films to be a full-body experience. I don’t want people to watch from a distance intellectually – I want their heart to race; I want them to lean in; I want them to involuntarily gasp and say something. To me, this is important, because that’s something cinema can do in its own special way.

PR – How do you compare the expectations versus the realities of directing your feature debut?

ST – My last short film, A Period Piece [2020], was made in my apartment – in this living room. It was shot over a period of four days. When you have something that’s so contained, you can really prep. Each shot is planned out, and you know about every single thing that’s in the frame. Simply because of the scale of a feature film production, you cannot do that.

Jih-E Peng, the cinematographer, and I worked on the visual language and its grammar – we had rules. We shot listed and for every scene we had a pillar, or a pivot shot that told the story.

[…] For somebody like me who likes to prep and go in with a plan, there was a sense that I wouldn’t be able to do that. I’d have to react in the moment and try to trust my instincts and rely on the people around me. I sometimes describe it as juggling so many balls in the air but not knowing how many, and sometimes you drop some. It was definitely a surprise how mentally taxing directing a feature was.

Then there are the realities of those expectations when the film comes out – in some ways those have been exceeded.

Sundance is a Mecca if you live in North America – it’s where you want your film to go as an independent filmmaker. […] Not only did it play there, but the audience response was incredible. Yes, the awards were great, and I wouldn’t say those didn’t mean anything to me, but this is a quiet film. Big and crazy things don’t happen, but there are emotional earthquakes. To feel the audience engaged with every look and unspoken moment was gratifying.

PR – How much did the personal roots of the story guide the film’s genesis and development?

ST – The personal roots are that I went to a school that was similar to the one in the film. I didn’t go to a boarding school, but it had the same ethos. Truth be told, most schools I knew were like that. There was this policing and surveillance, and as soon as you became a young woman, there was so much [said] about how your skirt is too short, and your top is too tight, or don’t bend over the desk like that and stay away from those boys.

So, that was all part of it, and I like to say the film is deeply personal in that I’ve experienced every feeling that Mira has. It’s not biographical in that I was chased by a mob of boys, but when a boyfriend was talking to someone else, who was maybe older, and I felt insecure, did I want to do strange things to get his attention? Yes. Have I felt the kind of menace, especially if you grow up as a woman in India, when you encounter a group of men, and you don’t know what their intentions are? Yes. It is deeply personal, and often all work is.

PR – Is this a political film, and more broadly speaking, would you agree that all art is political?

ST – A hundred percent and my work is very political. It’s not an issue film, in the way we sometimes define these. It’s not here to make a statement about the oppression of women – it’s a story that hopefully immerses you in the lives of these characters.

To show a young girl exploring her sexuality, and to do that without shame and to treat it as mundane and normal, fun even, is political. To show a mother who will not murder herself, who deeply loves her daughter but has her own desires, and sometimes jostles to get them, is political. And even if you say my work is not political, then that is political. There’s an embedded point-of-view, and how can a point of view not have some politics attached to it?

PR – Instead of talking at the audience, you’re using the film’s themes and ideas to plant seeds in their minds. Girls Will Be Girls addresses issues, but in the subtle way the characters and the narrative unfolds, and through an engaged and thoughtful audience.

ST – I love that metaphor of seeds because the words I often use are that I want the film to have a “residue or perfume.” I want the film to immerse you so deeply, and Preeti Panigrahi, who plays Mira, is so incredible that in her performance you feel that you can hear her thoughts. You are so close to her that it’s the closest to a lived experience, of being a young girl in a conservative boarding school in India, that we can give the audience. And because of this deep investment, it seems to spark people’s sense memories. It brings back memories of the first time you were in love, or some complicated familial love, where there is sometimes hate mixed in with love. I like that the film can do this.

PR – The film reminds us that intellect, reason and rationale can be overpowered by our emotional needs and desires. There comes a time to switch off your mind and feel your way through experiences, like being on the ocean and letting the wind in the sails carry you.

ST – That’s a great way of saying what Mira learns because she wants to white-knuckle her way through and take notes. She wants to figure life out that way, but you just can’t do that. I do like the idea of an ocean because it’s like surfing or a dance – you have to respond in the moment. Mira finds some insight and there’s deep wisdom in the way she comes to see both her mother and her boyfriend. It’s about seeing clearly, and I love that she’s able to do this at such a young age, which, of course, is a gift you can give your characters if you write them when you’re a little bit older. You can give them the wisdom you didn’t have at 16 [laughs].

PR – Mira’s journey in the film shows that wisdom is not solely predicated on age. Instead, curiosity and openness to life experiences, self-awareness and self-reflection will nurture one’s wisdom.

ST – Teenagers onscreen can sometimes be foolish. It feels like you’re looking down on them, but that was not my experience of many teenagers I knew at that age. People were thoughtful and were trying to figure things out. They had a kind of wisdom and clarity in seeing, which can get muddled as you grow up. As a teenager you think the world seems clear, but you can’t live by those principles when you’re an adult. So, it was important to give her this wisdom, and part of Mira growing up is the parent-child dynamic flips, where Mira is the one who can see a bit more clearly and guide her mother.

PR – In your pursuit of challenging gender, sexuality and identity, how do you perceive the function of art in encouraging progressive ideas?

ST – It’s not the same as activism, but I think of art as doing the slow, but essential work of cultural change, which is important. Growing up, I remember watching Indian cinema and the figure of the mother was always this martyr. There’s a famous Indian film called Mother India, and it features the quintessential mother that gives up everything for her kids. This is celebrated; this is almost holy.

Also, in many Indian films, when the actress is introduced, she might be more modern, Western or sexy, but there is often a moment in the film when she becomes demurer and chaste, and becomes more Indian. She’s marriageable and the best, good and pure when she’s stripped of her agency and sexuality.

Those are not the women I knew – the women in my life were transgressive and subversive. While society tried to put them in boxes, they would find their way around it. Those women were not reflected on screen because we were reflecting certain ideals of femininity, which are problematic. So, the intent was to reflect these smart, funny and subversive women that I did know. Mira can be a sexual being, and she can be good and lovable and wise. Her mother can have her desires and not want to sacrifice everything, and yet we can still love her.

PR – If the cinematic language has been shaped by the male point of view, how does the female gaze differ? To shift the language, is it about finding subtle ways to subvert it through this female point of view?

ST – We thought so much about that in a film like this where it deals with sexuality. We know what female sexuality from a male gaze looks like, and we know what the intention is – to sometimes show from the outside, like gazing in at an object.

In a sex scene, the cinematographer and I tried to focus on the inner emotional world. So, for me the most explicit, intimate, vulnerable and revealing moments are not about a kiss or a touch, or taking off a garment, it’s the emotional moments when Mira confesses that she’s afraid her breasts are saggy. It’s emotional vulnerability or the moment you feel your partner might not be turned on and may have lost their erection. Those are the moments that I’m interested in focusing on, because sex is an emotional exchange. You’re so vulnerable, and you can easily be hurt or hurt your partner. You can withhold and you can punish. You do all kinds of things, like you do in any conversation. I just haven’t seen that done and I don’t know if that’s necessarily the female gaze, but having a female gaze certainly helped that approach.

PR – Isabelle Huppert, head juror of the 2024 Venice Film Festival, has expressed concerns about the future of cinema, owing to its current “very weak” condition. In the past year, there have been discussions about how cinema is no longer the dominant art form. Do you share Huppert’s concerns, and what are your thoughts about the crisis of cinema’s diminishing dominance?

ST – It’s hard to say when you’re in it, but it does feel there has been such a shift. I know that not all audiences have come back to theatres after Covid, and many independent cinemas have shut down, especially in the US where I live. People talk about attention spans getting shorter and all of that, and I don’t need cinema to have a dominant place. It doesn’t need that. Video games are another immersive type of storytelling and there are some amazing independent video games, books and music. I want people to consume all of that, but it’s very important not to lose what we have with cinema, which is a communal viewing experience.

I have friends that have watched my film alone and then watched it in the cinema with an audience, where there is embarrassed laughter that spreads across the room and this sense of collective cringing, and somebody behind you gasps. It’s deeply life-affirming to be with a group of people that are having the same emotional experience as you. It makes you feel connected to other people, and I think we shouldn’t lose that.

Girls Will Be Girls is released in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday, September 20th.

…

.

Shuchi Talati is pictured at the top of this interview. The other image is a still from Girls Will Be Girls.