Why co-production matters

In all its luminosity, Payal Kapadia’s ‘All We Imagine As Light’ (‘AWIAL’) marks a milestone moment for Indian cinema. Since the film’s effervescent victory at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival (a first Grand Prix for an Indian film in 30 years), Kapadia’s sensitive tale of female companionship, set in the throes of metropolitan Mumbai, has turned audiences, film critics and film festival juries the world over its admirers. Sharing the spotlight with two similar, critically acclaimed and internationally adored, stories of and by Indian women — Sandhya Suri’s ‘Santosh’, Shuchi Talati’s ‘Girls Will Be Girls’ and ‘AWIAL’ forms a fearless frontier for feminist cinema against the aftershock of 2023’s ‘Animal’-istic explosion.

Sympathetic yet stoic in their commentary on India’s patriarchal infestation, the films deftly negotiate the differences between realism and optimism, offering layered narratives that are as much harrowing in their depictions as they are meditative in their resolutions. Vibrantly dissimilar in their construction and execution, the films’ respective realities and successes are nonetheless interrelated in their origins. None of the three are entirely ‘Indian’ films in their conceptual identities, in that none of the three is a film from any one specific country. Despite being Indian stories helmed by Indian filmmakers, the films are international co-productions, backed by the resources of countries far beyond India’s borders.

As suggested by the term, international co-productions refer to films that are intellectual material and/or financial collaborations between two or more independent countries. The idea originated in the 1950s’ Europe to increase co-operation between European countries and prevent an inflow of foreign media. Since then, Europe has thrived as a bolstering epicentre of international film and culture. In India, this form of filmmaking is relatively still in its nascent stages and owing to the oligopolistic structure of India’s domestic film industry, has largely remained restricted to the peripheries.

Several of the popular ‘arthouse’ or ‘parallel’ films to come out of India in recent years are collaborations between countries geographically, culturally and infrastructurally distant from India. The diversity of ownership allows for increased spectatorial opportunities beyond the mere multiplexes of Mumbai, simultaneously securing the filmmakers’ freedom of expression, unburdened by the historically harsh Censor Board of India. ‘AWIAL’, ‘Santosh’ and ‘Girls Will Be Girls’ have released undisturbed in several prominent film festivals. Their international existence also allows the opportunity to be political without risking the film’s future in the policed bureaucracy of Indian cinema. The Indian government has recognised the economic, geopolitical and cultural benefits of these co-productions and has helped increase the presence of international film producers, financiers and creatives in India. Since 2007, the International Film Festival of India has instituted a Co-Production Market, which functions as a space for systematised intermingling between international and domestic film producers and creators, fostering conversation, collaboration and companionship amidst these parties. ‘Court’ (2014), ‘Titli’ (2014), ‘Gali Guleiyan’ (2017) and ‘Manto’ (2018) are among the prominent films to come out of the festival’s co-production space. Additionally, India has standing co-production treaties with Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom. It allows for the development of a wide range of stories across diverse financial, geographical and political spectrums, strengthening India’s foreign relations and building the nation’s cultural capital by fostering a more globalised market in Indian cinema.

Despite these measures, the impact of international co-productions on the mainstream is curtailed by the restrictive rules surrounding film production, creation and viewership in India. Payal Kapadia’s attempts at raising awareness about skewed projection dimensions and conducting surveys to secure increased screenings for ‘AWIAL’ are deterministic shouts in a bottomless void of hero-worship and star culture. There is hope in reading the filmmaker’s valiant efforts as an independent crusade against a system that favours the commerce more than the culture. The subsequent reluctance of India’s domestic film bodies to exercise ownership towards these films, in a manner that befits their international acclaim, is stupefying. Ironically, it comes at a time when India’s popular film production companies are themselves trapped in a hedonistic cycle of sagas, spin-offs, stars and sequels, struggling for consistency in style, substance and revenue. Alternatively, international co-productions, with their diversity and experientialism, encourage novel humane stories and not referential ones.

It, thus, does not come as a surprise that it is these internationally rooted films with heart and soul that seem to attract viewers; especially those who turn to cinema as a place of belonging and not escape. Co-productions have helped several countries in Latin America, South Korea, France and Canada to emerge as key players in shaping international cinematic cultures, and the effulgent victories of ‘AWIAL’, ‘Santosh’ and ‘Girls Will Be Girls’ are indicative of a similar future taking shape for Indian cinema.

Sundance Film Festival has picked Rohan Kanawade’s ‘Cactus Pears’ (2025), a co-production between India and the United Kingdom, as an official selection for this year’s festival. As such, there is increasing hope that the culture of co-productions will help elevate Indian cinema to an even higher pedestal.

A 100-year history

Historically, this phenomenon has existed as a product of individual efforts. ‘The Light of Asia’ (1925), an Indo-European collaboration helmed by Franz Osten and Himanshu Rai, was one of the first films to pursue this goal. Osten and Rai, along with German cinematographer Josef Wirsching, went on to create several films under the Bombay Talkies studio label. This system was similar to the Merchant-Ivory collaboration that persisted through the 1960s until the early 2000s. In terms of governmental efforts to foster international partnerships, India’s cinematic relationship with the Soviet Union is an integral one. Khrushchev's Soviet Union and Nehru’s India were faced with similar post-war social-neorealist waves. This symbiotic relationship made global icons of several luminaries of Indian cinema, including Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy and KA Abbas. These productions sought equal representation across all aspects of filmmaking, including having two directors. Abbas’ and Vasili Pronin’s ‘Pardesi’ (1957) was the first Indo-Soviet co-production. It was also nominated for the Palme d’Or Award at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival.

— The writer is a filmmaker and film studies student at University of Toronto