What women want

Mazel Vyas (right) leads the Bengali short film

In 2020, with her short film Devi that starred Kajol, Neha Dhupia and Shruti Haasan, director Priyanka Banerjee spoke about rape cases in India. Four years on, the director has been selected for In Bloom, an anthology that puts the spotlight on five female filmmakers across the world. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and produced by Paramount Pictures and MTV Staying Alive Foundation, the anthology explores subjects of period poverty, child marriage, gender violence, family planning, and women's economic empowerment.

Banerjee's short film Alta begins with a defiant teenager refusing to come out of the bathroom, forcing her helpless father to seek help. For the Bengali short, the director chose Mazel Vyas to play the lead. "Mazel is an extraordinary actor whom I first watched in Dahaad [2023], and decided to approach. Since I chose to make the film in Bengali, we had to onboard a language coach [Husne Shabnam] for her," she says.

With directors from Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil and the US joining her, Banerjee is proud to be part of such a diversity-focused project. She highlights that inclusivity is not only the need of the hour, but also makes business sense. She reasons, "When different kinds of people see themselves represented on screen, it furthers their connection to the material. Diversity and inclusion of people leads to the diversity and inclusion of ideas. While all five stories are fictitious, they are heavily inspired by real-life women, or statistics we've read." Through Alta, she questions child marriage, in a conversational style. "I tend to write stories that can be achieved within small spaces, but that touch on big ideas within the words the characters exchange."