The script for Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls, being produced by Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal’s banner Pushing Buttons Studio, is the only Indian project selected for Gotham Week’s international features section. The script has been written by filmmaker Talati herself.
Sponsored by Netflix, Amazon Studios, Audible, SAGindie and WarnerMedia, the global film market allows filmmakers to showcase their work to producers, financiers, festival curators and sales agents. The annual event is being held virtually this year from 19–24 September.
Girls Will Be Girls is a coming-of-age story of the sixteen-year-old Mira whose relationship with her mother is tenuous at best. The feature is set in an elite boarding school in a small Himalayan town.
Talati’s script is of one of 15 that have been chosen for this year’s edition. It was also part of the Berlinale Script Station earlier this year and will participate in the Jerusalem Film Lab at the end of August, again as the only Indian project.
The Indo-French project is a co-production between Pushing Buttons Studio, Crawling Angel Films (Sanjay Gulati and Pooja Chauhan), and Dolce Vita Films (Claire Chassagne). Fazal and Chadha were in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, last month to wrap up shooting for a pitch video/teaser to help raise funds for Gotham Week and beyond.
Chadha said, “We hope to be able to find like-minded investors and collaborators at Gotham Week to join us in making this exciting film. It is a fresh and feminist story, and I believe Shuchi is a new voice in Indian cinema.”
Talati shared her excitement over the Gotham Week announcement. “Girls Will Be Girls deals with gendered power dynamics and female sexuality and I’ve always thought the story would resonate internationally, so I’m really happy about this selection,” the writer-director said.
“I hope Gotham Week will be a launchpad for us as we raise funds and build a mostly female crew — I hope people reach out to us,” she added.