Long before the release of the Hema Committee report in August 2024, which exposed the deep fractures beneath Malayalam cinema’s progressive façade, filmmakers Indu Lakshmi and Mini IG had sought to expose the particularly hypocritical brand of inclusivity that shaped Kerala’s film industry. Both of them were grantees of the state government’s flagship initiative, ‘Films Directed by Women’, which pledges Rs 3 crore annually to fund two films by women filmmakers. When the project was announced in 2019, it was deservedly received with much fanfare, but Indu and Mini have a different reality to share.
“We were awarded funding for our films based on the merit of our scripts. Yet, at the Kerala State Film Development Corporation (KSFDC), which oversees the funding, we were constantly belittled, as if this opportunity wasn’t something we had earned, but rather something they had granted us out of sheer generosity,” Indu said. The KSFDC, the country’s first public-sector corporation for film development, was established by the state government in 1975 with the aim of fostering the Malayalam film industry and facilitating the production and promotion of films.
