Globally, Guneet Monga is perhaps the best-known Indian producer today, thanks to two Academy Awards in the bag and her induction to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The 40-year-old producer who has given us films like Gangs of Wasseypur, The Lunchbox, Masaan and the recent Kill, spoke with t2 on a rain-swept afternoon seated in a sea-facing suite in a Juhu hotel.

Kill is in the theatres and Gyaraah Gyaraah has dropped on Zee5. How does it feel to have two releases back to back?

It is a humbling and grateful feeling that one piece of cinema is in the theatre and the other one has released on OTT. So it’s definitely a very, very special moment for everyone at Sikhya (Entertainment) and at Dharma (Productions).

Kill made people sit up not just because of the violence but also because of the use of prosthetics and light.

Yeah, I think Kill is definitely the work of (cinematographer) Rafi Mehmood, Zuby (Johal), who did the prosthetics, Mayur Sharma (production designer), who built the train, the editor Shiv(kumar V.) and Rohit (Chaturvedi), who made the costumes. Their work is absolutely exceptional. Nikhil (Nagesh Bhat, director) went to work with some of the best people.

It’s being celebrated as a cinematic marvel where the shoot took place in a very limited space. Nikhil says he thinks that our production designer and DOP are scientists as the work that they have pulled off is actually a work of art. In a very limited space, they showed movement through light. That’s how the fight choreography was done. We used less of effects and more of prosthetics, like you rightfully said. It has been incredible. What I’m very happy about is that it has been our HoDs from India who have been able to put their work on the world map.

Yeah, you can’t make out which is prosthetics and who is actually human.

Thank you. It’s all Zubi’s work. Her company is called Dirty Hands and their first film was Gangs of Wasseypur. Then they did Kill.

Doesn’t the train exactly move?

We actually had hydraulics but not of the train. The train was fixed. There was hydraulic movement in the ends of the trains, in the toilet area. When you put the camera on the hydraulics, the jerk came from the camera while everybody was still. It’s the genius of the filmmaker Nikhil, Rafi and Mayur.

The catch line you have in your OTT venture Gyaarah Gyarah is ‘When two worlds connect’. At another level, it seems to highlight the collaboration of your production house Sikhya with Karan Johar’s Dharma. The first outcomes are these two back-to-back ventures.

We are also doing a spy comedy with Ayushmann Khurana and Sara Ali Khan. Akash Kaushik is the director. We are shooting that right now.

You have also announced the Hindi adaptation of the French comedy The Intouchables. Have you frozen the cast?

Not yet.

You put up a video at the start of the year, in which you mentioned another season of Gutur Gu.

Yes, Season 2 is coming up. Season 3 is starting. Shooting will start soon.

Which would be the turning point of your career — The Lunchbox (2013) or Kavi (a 2009 Oscar-nominated short film)?

I think The Lunchbox was celebrated around the world and it was something that gave me a lot of strength and means. Kavi opened up new horizons and gave me exposure. But The Lunchbox was loved around the world. I would say that was a turning point.

The Elephant Whisperers has consolidated your position.

Both Period. End of sentence. and The Elephant Whisperers. Winning an Oscar was completely out of my dreams.

You have been named an ambassador of Bafta (British Academy Film Awards)’s Breakthrough India initiative. What is your role there?

I’m the head of the jury. There is an incredible jury and we choose young talent. I preside over the jury to be able to choose young talent who would be mentored by Bafta for a year. Whoever they want to meet in their respective fields, be it a DoP or an actor or a writer, Bafta will enable that. This is more for mid-career people with a good body of work to judge. We put them out there and add value as conversation and exposure lead to more understanding of the craft.

Is it some kind of a residency?

No, these are all mentorship calls over video. They have three to four calls. It’s always quarterly work.

Would you say more doors are opening for Indian films now?

Absolutely. The last three years, we’ve been winning Sundance (Film Festival in the US). Last year, our work at the Oscars got recognised. India is definitely growing, but my idea of growth is more like putting our colour, our people, our languages out there for people to know that we are actually a country of many languages with cinema of many languages — Bengali, Tamil, Telugu... Somewhere I feel even OTTs have done that at scale. They unified the country. They allowed everybody to consume each other’s content. But yes, outside India definitely with Payal (Kapadia)’s work this year being celebrated at Cannes and winning the award (Grand Prix 2024 for All We Imagine as Light). I just think it’s a very good time to continue making films.

Talking of yourself, are you in a position now to launch a project without having to think where the finances would come from?

Sikhya is not a financing production company. As a creative production company, we find the stories, we find the director, we work with the director, we do the entire heavy lifting to deliver the film, market it, distribute it — the whole thing. But we look for partners for financing, and in case of this show (Gyaarah Gyaarah), it has been Dharma and Zee5 as a platform.

In a country where the government doesn’t have funds for independent cinema, like France, Germany or the Netherlands, is this the way forward, hand-holding with big production houses? You’ve worked with Balaji also before.

Absolutely. I think in countries where there is no government financing, there needs to be creative producing. This country needs more producers who can innovate within the system. When we did Peddlers or Haramkhor, we crowdfunded the whole film. Peddlers went to Cannes in 2012 on the back of Facebook. There was no crowd-funding platform back then. And when we did The Lunchbox, they were half-financed by France. The equity investment in India was only 50 per cent.

There was also Germany …

Irrfan Khan in The Lunchbox

Yes, we raised money from France and Germany, so we use the European system for our interest. So, this country needs more independent producers innovating the system, looking at distribution early, looking at selling rights innovatively so that you can continue making independent cinema and not be able to be compared to the same equity commercial industry.

Do you see yourself working with big stars?

I would love to work with big stars. A good story enables more things. I think it just goes from strength to strength. One day, that will happen. For me, the idea of working with big stars comes with the thought ‘How do I add value?’.

They are all doing their work. I’d love to do a big star-cast film that I can take internationally. I want to make India’s Black Panther (the 2018 American superhero film). Yeah, I want to make India’s Crazy Rich Indians (inspired by the 2018 romantic comedy drama Crazy Rich Asians) and Brown Panther. So that’s my dream.

You turned producer at 24.

No, earlier. At 21, with Say Salaam India.

How was the world then?

It’s difficult to be a young person to be taken seriously with so much money.

Did gender also matter?

I actually didn’t even think about gender. I only thought about gender during the #metoo movement that “achcha may be…” I never had that lens, so I didn’t know. But yes, I did feel the (pressure of) being the youngest in the room to talk about crores and for somebody to trust you with crores to go make a film. I always felt there was a lot of ageism and I wanted to look older. I just turned 40 and during Gangs of Wasseypur I used to dress like a 40-year-old. I was 26 back then.

How was that? Did you colour your hair white (laughs)?

Yes, all of that! See my pictures online. You can see me wearing sari or jacket at the premiere and other programmes. I saw Mira Nair dress in a certain way. So, I used to dress like Mira Nair because that’s the only representation I had. Definitely, I felt discriminated against with age. But, you know, I am so in love with my work that I keep telling one story after another. I do my work and I do whatever it takes to get it done. So there’s no time for me to internalise discrimination. It is their problem, not mine.

Coming to the show Gyaarah Gyaarah, you have worked with the director Umesh Bist earlier in Pagglait. Tell us about the collaboration.

My favourite filmmaker in the world is Umesh Bist. He internalises material so well. The work that he has done in Pagglait and in Gyaarah Gyaarah, it’s so layered, with such beautiful writing and directing and visuals. He is very good with the cliffhangers, with thriller mystery, with the resources that he had. I would love to make all of Umesh sir’s films happen. He’s a huge value-add in the life of Sikhya and we love collaborating with him.

When you picked the Korean series Signal, was it a personal choice?

Yes, we loved the show and we brought that to Umesh sir. Zee 5 loved the script, and that’s how the partnership happened. He wrote it so well and adapted it to India. It is not enough to adapt. You have to culturally adapt it. So he did a lot of work in being able to adapt it to India. I hope the audiences see that.

Raghav Juyal, we hear, was your choice and he was on board even when the director was being chosen. Did you see something in him during the shoot of Kill that made him an obvious choice?

Yeah, he’s an incredible actor. I think what sir was looking for, was young energy, Raghav has that, a young sense of wonder and the energy of Yug Arya. Raghav is a phenomenal actor and his work in Kill is exceptional.

What’s your take on the alternatives in viewing experiences that the Covid period has thrown up?

I know that cinemas will never go out of fashion because you can never take away the sense of community viewing. You can also never take away the sense of viewing at home when you want to — long-format binge-watching. Our audiences are trained for binge-watching. So, there will always be people who love to watch things in their original language for cultural context, for reference, for the beauty of the colour and the face — whether there is an Asian face on an Indian face or an African face. They’d always like to watch subtitles. And there will always be people who would like to watch the dubbed version, which exists even today.

With artificial intelligence (AI) coming in and being able to process big data fast, do you foresee a day when language would cease to matter in films, with voices being dubbed in different languages by AI?

Technology will always come and surprise us. Who knew we would be able to do video calls? One has to constantly keep adapting to new technology. I think people who know how to work with AI will rule the world as you have to also work with technology in a way that services filmmaking and the experience of it.

But for a film like Kill, which is not dialogue-driven, I don’t think AI will ever take over. There was little dialogue and it was all emotion and it’s very heavily driven on action. So it was a visual spectacle and not all dialogue or drama. So there will always be genre films that break out, like horror, like action, which are not so language-dependent, but they cross boundaries. I think AI will come and teach us something new and will advance our technology, which is great. But I don’t think it can take away the experience. There will always be people who will want the real feel. We will all coexist.