East meets West in Anushka Shah’s cinema

East meets West, not just in producer Anushka Shah’s forthcoming film Christmas Karma directed by our very own Punjaban Gurinder Chadha, but also in Anushka’s very being. If Mumbai is home, this alumna of London School of Economics, who worked as media researcher at MIT and currently is the CEO of Civic Studios, is simply bitten by the Bollywood bug.

Cinema beckoned when probing the role of state in a citizen’s life, the realisation ‘what a force Bollywood is,’ dawned upon her. She has no doubt that cinema impacts us, in both shaping our thoughts and in reflecting who we are, may be not in linear fashion. As she puts it, “The pathways are not direct, not as simple as; you watch a movie today and change begins instantly, but rather far more complicated.” Since cinema works in so many subliminal ways, she would have nothing to do with movies which romanticise violence, misogyny, patriarchy and masculine toxicity. If socially-driven cinema is her cause celebre, she firmly believes in marrying entertainment with message.

Interestingly, she dubs Christmas Karma, based on Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, as “masala musical, high on Gurinder’s trademark energy with significant messaging about race, migration et al as its core.” And, with a brown actor, Kunal Nayyar, in the lead for a film aimed at the Western market, it’s as brave as it gets. But she also adds, “Creativity has to be the key and the politics you bring in has to serve the story.”

A producer’s job might be widely understood as anything but creative and often perceived as that man/woman with trunk loads of cash. She enlightens us on the contrary. She says, “Lead producer is that person who incubates the entire project, imagines it brings the right team and talent together which could often mean a symphony of 200 people.” Indeed, producers rarely get credit if things work. She winks, “We spend lots of sleepless nights and if the project does not work out, liability is certainly ours.”

Associated with a host of projects, including the UK’s 2025 Oscar contender Santosh, her choice is eclectic by all means. She avers, “We at Civic Studios are not wedded to any genre or format.” Nor to big names. Backing new voices with gumption like Ishan Shukla, who found an interesting intersection between gaming and cinema in Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust, is very important for her.

A Gujarati by birth, her Punjabi connect too runs deep. Her upcoming series Ikatthe, directed by Hardik Mehta and created by Gursimranjeet Khamba, follows three generations of a Sikh family. Even more exciting is a film on Saadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh to be directed by award-winning director Pan Nalin. Enthused about the film, she observes, “Through the lens of insanity and sanity and switching it around, Toba Tek Singh, set during India’s Partition is ever relevant; not just in South-Asian context but globally what with land-based conflicts becoming the order of the day.”

One day would she care to turn a director and the answer is prompt and in negative. She reasons, “There is an excellent plethora of talent in India. I would like to create spaces for them rather than be the talent. I am an out and out nerd about systems.”

Working with big names such as Gurinder and Pan has taught her, “No matter how big you are, how many hits you have given, you are never safe; you have to constantly reinvent yourself.”

Only she is not just transforming herself but enabling others to claim and reclaim success. Among her other enablers is a one million pound corpus fund to promote environmental concerns. She elaborates, “Cinema with messages on climate, not as doomsday scenarios but with positive solution oriented approach, is eligible for funding.” Clearly she not only talks about her social responsibility but walks the talk.

Christmas Karma, which releases in India on December 12, however, she promises will talk in the language of fun and merriment. And the icing on the Christmas cake would be as she puts it, “You will walk out feeling motivated.” After all, ‘change yourself for the better,’ isn’t just another line in the trailer. Anushkha is determined to make the world better with better cinema.