“Although there were 14 Malayalam films and six debut films in the Malayalam Cinema Today section in IFFK 2019, there were no films by woman filmmakers. This, and the fact that my film, featuring the story of a young girl, was rejected by the organizers struck me as strange,” Geetha, who also teaches World Cinema and Documentary Production at Film@CultureLab, Newcastle University, in the UK, told me during the Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) 2019. The IFFK has been attacked by many independent filmmakers who formed the Movement for Independent Cinema, questioning the increasing presence of commercial hits in its line-up. Run Kalyani had its world premiere under the Competition on Indian Language Films at KIFF 2019, where it also won the Special Jury Award. Geetha was overjoyed—the award was a validation of her decade-long, daunted struggle to tell stories of the lives of ordinary women through cinema. Geetha at…

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