Indian Filmmaker Aditi Anand on Redefining Indian Storytelling

Aditi Anand, who is also the creator of Little Red Car Films and a co-founder of Neelam Studios, discusses her path in producing strong films, such as Kaala and Bison: Kaalamaadan. She shares how empathy and activism inspire her to write daring, socially based stories that are transforming South Indian film in an exclusive conversation with Pa. Ranjith. She also highlights the importance of creativity, collaborative efforts, and the need to be courageous.

You often call yourself a “cheesy desh bhakt.” Can you share how your upbringing in Delhi shaped the way you see stories and cinema?

I grew up in Delhi in the ’90s—the era of Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, Ek Chidiya Anek Chidiya, Each One Teach One. Patriotism back then wasn’t loud, it was collaborative. It was about participation, not performance. That’s why I jokingly call myself a cheesy desh bhakt—because I still believe in that soft, stubborn chak de kind

For me, cinema is an extension of that sentiment. I’m not here to make propaganda or preach. I’m here because I genuinely believe this country deserves better conversations than the ones we’re currently having. And I think films – especially mainstream ones – are still the most powerful way to have them together. With disagreement. With laughter. With feeling. But together.

From UTV and Adlabs to founding Little Red Car Films—what did those early years in Bombay teach you as a producer?

Technically I grew up in Delhi. But I really grew up in Bombay (now Mumbai), and more than any job could, the city was my greatest teacher.

Mumbai must be one of the 10 greatest cities in the world. It’s insane, manic, chaotic, impossibly BIG – and yet somehow everything feels small and intimate. It has space for everyone. Bombay is to India what New York is to the world.

My first job out of film school was a toxic job under a toxic boss. I couldn’t find a house — classic “single woman working in films” Bombay stereotype. At one point, I literally didn’t have a place to call home. My broker finally suggested I get a certificate of employment from a corporate company so I could appear less demonic to the RWA uncles. So I went to this boss, sat in front of him – nearly in tears – and explained I just needed him to sign a basic letter saying I worked there. He listened quietly, nodded, and seemed deeply moved… paused like he was about to say something profound… and then exclaimed, “Veg Falafel! Order me a veg falafel.” And that was it. Conversation over. My housing crisis was swallowed whole by chickpeas.

I know it sounds terrible – and it was – but that’s Bombay, and that’s also production. Both will throw endless curveballs at you. The only skill you really need is perseverance… you just have to keep going and you have to learn to laugh along the way, mostly at yourself.

Secondly, Bombay taught me that beauty is everywhere. In an effort to make a showreel with a dear friend, we tried to be fancy and make a Pina Bausch–type expressionistic dance-in-strange-places music video. To date, it’s one of my favourite experiences, mostly because it involved walking through the still-unknown streets of Mumbai trying to find these spots. And in Mumbai, there is a new world behind every turn — the city is an onion. Right behind a whole lane dedicated to props and costumes, we turned into the wrong path and found a welding workshop that made only the fronts of train engines. They were square faces with gaping eyes where the windows would be. Just rows and rows of them. So we had a couple do an incredibly sexy dance right in the middle of what can only be described as giant masks for giant Darth Vaders. We shot at a secret fishing dock where the boats would come in early morning when the tide was high and then sit there when the tide went out like baby Gulliver’s playground. We shot another quite risqué-adjacent dance atop a really busy subway with no permissions, only a bottle of rum for the beat cops who would call us and let us know when a police van was heading in that general direction so we could pretend like we were just hanging out there.

Bombay has magic. Producing also has magic — rarely 🙂 — but every now and then you get showered with fairy dust and forget how grimy and sweaty you really are.

And honestly, my education started even before the “jobs.” On Firaaq with Nandita Das, I was an amorphous being – floating between direction, production, and crisis control. Before that, ‘Whistling Woods’ had already melted my arty-farty Delhi brain into the madness of cinema. That producing course fast-tracked what would otherwise have taken me years of struggle.

Unlike my first boss, the women I worked under at Walkwater/Adlabs and UTV were incredible mentors. I was very lucky. And I think the idea of starting my own company was seeded long before that – watching my dad build his from scratch. In some ways, Little Red Car Films was inevitable. It was always in the bloodstream.

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir was an ambitious global film with Dhanush. How did that experience change you personally and professionally?

There is ambition — and then there is nuts. Fakir was both. It really was an extraordinary journey, and I was the Fakir.

The film was originally meant to be directed by Marjane Satrapi, someone I hugely admire. When I first met the French producer, he was actually in India pitching another film. Fakir was just a forgotten dossier lying on the table. And it almost fell apart right there, because he was too French – and maybe too white 🙂 – to know how to handle someone like Marjane.

They were looking at the “usual suspects” for the lead role. I suggested Dhanush. Right around then, that wild look from Maari had just dropped online. It was a castles-in-the-air moment – I cold-messaged him, fully expecting silence. Instead, he replied immediately, asking for the script. Marjane’s draft was pure magical realism chaos – I still don’t know how I convinced him to say yes!

From there, the whole film had to be rebuilt without Marjane. Pulling together India, France, Belgium, Singapore, the U.S. – and making them sign a co-production contract across five time zones – and then actually producing a film across two continents, four countries, with cast and crew from all over the world… I mean, our director was Canadian and our first AD was Australian. And somewhere in the middle of the madness, Amit Trivedi delivered one of his most underrated albums.

When the film was released, it travelled to 56 countries. Dhanush made his international debut. And then it flopped in India.

That broke my heart.

I had put everything into it. Peers who stayed in studio systems were collecting credits on big-ticket films. My film got lost. But Fakir was my PhD from the School of Hard Knocks. It showed me my strengths as a producer, and it exposed my weaknesses. Even while promoting Bison today, I’m haunted by one thing – I didn’t stand by Fakir when it mattered. I let others take (wrong) calls.

But here’s the thing: if I hadn’t been heartbroken by Fakir, I wouldn’t have found Pa. Ranjith. If it hadn’t felt so dark, I might’ve missed the silver lining blazing right in front of me.

Now I know — there is no finish line in cinema. The release date is not the end. Important films stay with you forever. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

You could call it resilience. Or you could call it Stockholm Syndrome.

What made Kaala with Pa. Ranjith such a turning point in your career?

In my generation of Hindi cinema, we were missing the angry young man. The angriest hero we got was a love-lorn Rockstar. To see something capture rage and agency together was very novel for me.

By that time, producers and studios were already sanitising language. “Change this name, make it more neutral. Don’t say Dalit rights organisation – call it Youth organisation.” Messages floating in film groups asking for “nationalistic” content. And then suddenly, this film – these very powerful, no-holds-barred conversations that a director is having with his own cinema.

There were four primary characters in Kaala – two were actors, and the third and fourth were the production design and music. The scene in the climax, with the use of colours and that brief burst of red between the black and blue, was a stunning exposition of the Ambedkarite movement and its relationship with the Left. In that film, blink and you will miss the lines of code written (literally) into the walls.

It was like coming up for air — being excited about meeting someone.

Ranjith hasn’t just been a partner in work and business, he’s also been part of my political education. That I can see the work as more than right and left is in very large part because of what I learnt being around him.

How did Neelam Studios come into being, and what makes its vision unique in Tamil cinema today?

Neelam Studios happened on a whiteboard in Ranjith’s old office. We had already signed up to try and do 5 films together. The first had been shot during the pandemic year and released just as Omicron hit Chennai! Ranjith at the time had a lovely young team around him and I really enjoyed working with them. We were two very independent production houses trying to grow up quickly. Ranjith had done many more films but I had maybe a more organised (relatively) approach and was keen to find more stable and sustainable sources of funding to fit his steady supply of amazing content and talent! HA — what do they say about best laid plans.

All the same, it literally was that one conversation on a tiny whiteboard in my shitty handwriting. I think the base of it was friendship and mutual respect. The journey since may have been a wild departure from where we started and we have gotten to know each other beyond the impulses of friendship, but I think we’ve built something unique. Let’s just say that I don’t speak Tamil and Ranjith doesn’t speak Excel!

With Bison, I can say that it has turned out to be a true collaboration. In a world where studios and platforms play a stronger and stronger role, Neelam Studios is unique in that we speak both cinema and studio! We offer a very unique opportunity to partners in other territories who may want to be in this dynamic market but are daunted by the peculiarities of the industry.

What excited you about Mari Selvaraj’s narration of Bison: Kaalamaadan?

The most exciting thing was Mari Selvaraj himself. I loved his first film.

But I still remember the exact moment the Bison Kaalamaadan synopsis arrived. It was May 2020 – the whole world was at a standstill. I was at my desk in our home in Mumbai. It was an overcast evening and the sun was being dramatic as it set. And then the email came.

Mari Selvaraj is a writer first. His synopsis didn’t read like a pitch – it read like literature. It was structured like a short story, complete with emotional stitching between the lines. It didn’t describe sport. It felt like a memory. It painted a world far bigger than just a linear sports narrative.

And now, years later, after Karnan, Maamannan and Vaazhai, I can say what I sensed in that first synopsis still holds true – Bison isn’t a story Mari is observing. It’s a story that comes from inside him. It’s a lived experience finding form through cinema.

The film took time to take off—how did you hold on through the wait, and what was that process like for you as a producer?

It didn’t feel like a delay. It felt like waiting for something to arrive at the right time. Bison kept getting pushed – after Pariyerum Perumal, then Karnan, then Maamannan. After a point I stopped asking “when” and started asking “what is it waiting for?”

Looking back now, it was waiting for Dhruv to grow into the film. He had to become the man the story needed. That kind of change doesn’t follow a schedule.

It was not easy. There were months when I didn’t know if we would actually make it. I don’t think people understand how lonely waiting can feel in this job. You carry a film that doesn’t exist yet, and you have to keep convincing people — and yourself — that it’s real.

I didn’t hold on because I was confident. I held on because I didn’t know how to walk away from something I believed in. Ranjith stood by me. Applause came in when things could have collapsed. That faith from others helped me hold my own.

So yes, it took time. But some films you don’t rush. You meet them when they are ready.

Waiting also gave us things we could never have planned. The songs, for instance. No one could have expected Thennadu to do what it did. It’s like a pensieve — taking people’s memories and putting them on screen. My 90-year-old grandmother, who doesn’t know a word of Tamil, was deeply moved by the song Cheenikkallu. That kind of response comes from breathing, from space, from time. When you see the film in theatres, you’ll feel that same repose – that sureness of hand that only comes when something has been allowed to arrive at its own pace.

Dhruv Vikram headlines Bison. How do you see his growth and transformation through this film?

I met Dhruv when he was still a boy. Polite. Lean. Soft around the edges. At that time, he had already committed to the film on paper, but I don’t think either of us fully grasped what it would take to actually become the man this story needed.

Mari sir was very clear – he didn’t want an actor performing kabaddi. He wanted someone who could stand beside real players and not look like a visitor. That’s a difficult standard. It’s not physical alone. It’s mental. It’s about how you walk, how you hold your shoulders, how you breathe between words.

I didn’t witness every training session. But I would hear reports. Sometimes I’d see small clips – grainy, shaky footage from some ground. And I could tell. His body language was changing. His stillness was changing. Even the way he stood when he wasn’t doing anything — there was weight in it.

People will see “fitness” or “transformation” on screen. But what I saw was discipline. Quiet work. No announcements. No performance of effort. Just showing up until something shifted.

He gave himself to the director. He fully surrendered. I don’t think he even realises how much he has changed. Which is why I say this film is a canvas that Mari sir is fully in control of. For Dhruv to allow himself to be deconstructed and then reconstructed again in the image of what his director needed — that’s a rare thing to witness.

You are one of the few women producers from North India working in Tamil cinema. What has that journey been like in a male-dominated industry?

I didn’t come in thinking of myself as “a woman producer in Tamil cinema.” I came in as a producer trying to do the work. But very quickly I realised that the room sees you before the work does.

It is hard. Not dramatically hard in the way people imagine – no one is shouting or pushing you out – it’s harder in quieter ways. You’re constantly being assessed. Every decision you take has to be justified twice. You have to prove your competence before you can even begin to collaborate.

I don’t speak the language, I didn’t grow up in the culture, and I’m a woman. That’s three disadvantages before I even open my mouth. There were days when I felt invisible. There were days I felt like I was being tolerated rather than trusted.

But I stayed because I believed the work was worth it. And I stayed because I had people who stood beside me. Ranjith has always made space for me, not as a token but as a partner. And when things got difficult, it was Manind Bedi, my work partner at Neelam Studios, who did the hard work to keep everything standing.

While working in the Tamil film industry is immensely rewarding for the sheer talent and stories you’re surrounded by, I do feel that much more needs to be done to make space for women – especially in positions of power. I’m happy to say that on Bison Kaalamaadan, both our production and AD teams were led by women during the shoot.

Beyond films, you’ve been deeply involved in activism—India My Valentine, To Dharavi With Love, Rabies Mukt Bharat, and even the Equal Marriage case. How do these experiences shape your storytelling?

I don’t see them as separate. It’s all part of the same instinct – how a community comes together to work toward a single goal. That companionship, sometimes among complete strangers, is very beautiful. Films work the same way. Perfect strangers have to find a way to share pieces of their soul and move in sync toward one vision.

I wouldn’t call myself an activist. There are far braver people who deserve that word. I think I’m just someone who knows how to organise, to join a few dots so that something becomes slightly easier for someone else.

The Equal Marriage case was different. That was personal. When we first became petitioners, I had freezing cold feet. I drove our lawyers mad. But my partner is a very special and very brave person. She found a way to make it make sense to me. In the beginning, during the hearings, there was so much optimism – it felt like the case was already won. I even wondered if there was any point in being petitioners when the tide seemed to be so clearly turning in our favour. And then we lost. But strangely, losing made it even clearer to me why it mattered. It meant the fight was necessary. We have a young son together, and at that time we thought we were doing this to change the world for him. Now watching him grow, I think perhaps he will change the world for us.

I used to think producing was about being the spine of the system, but I now think it’s the circulatory system. You keep the whole thing alive. You need the body as much as it needs you.

Cinema, for a lucky few, is just work. For the rest of us, it is inseparable from life. The world feels very bleak nowadays, and helplessness is heavier than the work itself. Having the opportunity to contribute – even in a small way – is the only way to get through it.

There’s a line I try to live by:

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

Having light and hope and faith in the goodness of the world is the only way you can continue doing this job.

You and your partner adopted your son the same week your Tamil cinema journey began. How has motherhood influenced your work and perspective as a producer?

Motherhood shifted my perspective more than my personality. It didn’t suddenly make me softer – it just made my time more valuable. I can’t take industry drama as seriously anymore. If something is unnecessary noise, I walk away. I don’t want to be away from my son any longer than I absolutely have to, so I’m stricter with myself. I can’t throw ten plans at the wall and see what sticks – I have to prioritise and plan.

My partner has been incredibly supportive – probably more than I’ve managed to be for her – but the truth is, I want my son to grow up seeing me work. I grew up wanting to be like my father. I think that’s partly why I did this mad thing of quitting safe jobs and starting my own company. I saw both my parents work hard and build things. I want him to feel that too – not just admire it from afar, but be part of it. Honestly, I’d be quite delighted if he was a nepo kid.

But the biggest shift has been in how I understand fear. I’ve always believed fear is a wall – and you must run through it. Scatter it. That’s how I lived. Then one day my son got scared of something, and I encouraged him to run through it like I would. He didn’t. He just stood near the wall. He touched it, smelt it, observed it. He would return to it again and again until it stopped feeling scary. He didn’t charge – he understood his fear.

He made me realise I’ve bulldozed through fear my whole life without actually processing it. For the first time, I’ve started admitting what scares me. Being a producer scares me. But I’m learning to make friends with my fear instead of fighting it.

Dogs and animal welfare have been a constant part of your life. How does that passion continue to find space in your journey?

I don’t think I deserve the title of “animal welfare person.” There are people who do far more. For me, dogs are not a cause I chose – they’re something that chose me. You don’t control that kind of primal connection.

And I can’t talk about dogs without talking about my dog – Bombil. She is my best friend. I genuinely didn’t know it was possible to have this deep relationship with another living being. She is also the reason my partner and I survived some very difficult years. The second we’d raise our voices, she would appear like a bat out of hell. And try fighting in a mellow, hushed tone – it kills the satisfaction. So we went from fighting constantly to barely fighting at all. I’m also fairly certain there were times my partner stayed with me only because she assumed I would run away with our dog if we split. So here we are — held together by a small, bossy creature.

As for the larger question of animal welfare – what drives me is guilt. We don’t deserve dogs. They have been our companions for 30,000 years, and yet today we are actively working to turn them into villains. The aftermath of the recent Supreme Court judgment has been a wake-up call. It made me want to move beyond sentiment and start working toward practical, systemic solutions.

We need technology tools that allow public health advocates and animal welfarists to collaborate rather than fight. Whether or not someone likes street dogs is irrelevant – what we do about the issue is something we have no choice but to agree on. We need better bite data collection, scientific sterilisation loops, population mapping, equitable access to PEP vaccines, and proper guidance for wound care in lower-income areas.

We need more calm, science-led systems – not moral panic.

After Bison, this is what I want to build toward.

What do you hope audiences will take away from Bison: Kaalamaadan?

If people laugh and cry and get goosebumps – they’ll carry the film with them. That’s all I want.

Looking ahead, what kinds of stories do you want to champion as a producer?

I don’t know the answer to that question, because it’s not fixed. I don’t have mandates. Though many people who DM me begin with messages like, “Ma’am, it’s a woman-centric film, you will love it – there is a rape and then the lady dies!” I suspect I’ve developed a reputation.

I think there are filmmakers I want to work with – if they’ll have me 🙂 And I also think I may want to direct, or at least write something of my own.