The number of films with women as protagonists has grown a fair bit in the past decade. Also, the number of films helmed by woman directors is rising. Siddharth Roy Kapur recently produced two such films, Shonali Bose’s The Sky Is Pink (2020) and Sooni Taraporevala’s Yeh Ballet (2020).
Kapur spoke about this at a recent webinar organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Ladies Organization, FLO.
Kapur said he produced these films because he was impressed by the content. “Today our country is at a point where women are coming forward with stories where they are not afraid to speak their minds," he said at the session. "It’s not like I deliberately decided that I have to only work with female directors. It just happened that two women brought two incredible scripts which I loved and wanted to produce.”
He added, “I will continue to prefer content-driven projects as at the end of the day it’s about making a great movie and getting the audience’s acceptance.”
Kapur said gaining acceptance from the audience is all that matters. “The beauty of our industry [is that] it’s all about your performance at the box office. If you are accepted by the audience and they love watching you, one will be given the value they deserve, no matter what, and I feel this is the way it should have always been.”
Kapur believes the trend of telling stories about female characters will continue. “Traditionally films have always been male-centric, which is why movies like Mother India (1957), Umrao Jaan (1981) and Pakeezah (1972) were often mentioned as exceptions," he said. "Today, it’s happening so much more often that we often mention such films because they are so many happening and it will keep increasing.”
Interestingly, Kapur’s wife, actress Vidya Balan, has mostly been doing films with female protagonists for the past decade, starting with The Dirty Picture (2011) and including Kahaani (2012), Bobby Jasoos (2014), Kahaani 2 (2016), Begum Jaan (2017), Tumhari Sulu (2017) and Shakuntala Devi (2020).