Producer Aditi Anand is a multi-hyphenate in the truest sense of the word. Not only is she one of the petitioners fighting for equal rights of the LGBTQIA+ community, along with her partner Susan Dias, but she is also involved in the stray dogs court case that has divided the nation. All this, while running Neelam Studios with Pa Ranjith and backing socially conscious films like Mari Selvaraj’s Tamil film Bison Kaalamaadan.
With so much on her hands, Aditi terms the year as ‘fantastic’. In a candid and reflective interview with Hindustan Times, she discusses everything from the rise of hyper-masculinity in cinema to the locker room talk she has to endure behind the scenes while working in the film industry. But above all, she talks about her long-standing love affair with cinema and telling stories. Excerpts.
Need to tell an untold story
Aditi has studied history in college, not in the manner of whatever we have been taught in school, but by exploring stories that she says were ‘lost to academia’. “That sparked my interest in making non-fiction documentaries and marrying it with fictional filmmaking,” explains the producer, adding, “Unfortunately, there was no scope for that back then, and once you come to Bombay, it’s hard not to be bitten by the big screen bug.”
And thus began her career, working on films such as Paan Singh Tomar, No One Killed Jessica, and Chillar Party. Soon, she set up Little Red Car Films, and with nothing but stars in her eyes, produced The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir (2018) with Dhanush. “The film did well abroad, but crashed and burned in India. It was also becoming increasingly difficult to make anything political in Bombay,” she reflects.
The Rajinikanth factor
The same year, Dhanush produced Kaala, directed by Pa Ranjith and featuring his then-father-in-law, Rajinikanth. Aditi went to the theatre as a show of support to her lead actor and was unexpectedly ‘blown away’ by it. “I texted Ranjith to tell him how much I enjoyed the film, and we hit it off. He was trying to produce five films with debut filmmakers, and while my initial interest was to work with him directing, I watched Mari Selvaraj’s Pariyerum Perumal and just had to produce his next with Ranjith,” she says.
And so, a sign on the dotted line pre-COVID led to making films under Neelam Studios, such as Writer (2021), J Baby (2024), and now, Bison (2025). “I had the great fortune of working with Ranjith and Mari. It’s much easier to make a film you know will do numbers. But it’s much harder to make films like these,” she says of their slate. In fact, even Mari was constantly asked while promoting Bison why he keeps making ‘caste films’, and Aditi has a theory on why the subject makes people so uncomfortable.
Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay Deenanath Chauhan
“There’s a famous dialogue of Amitabh Bachchan’s where he says his name is Vijay Deenanath Chauhan. Had he said Vijay Mondal, people would’ve called it a caste film. I think it bothers people because caste is everywhere, and for those who grew up in urban cities, there’s an illusion of living in a post-caste society. And yet, polite casteism is everywhere if you pay attention,” says Aditi, reflecting on why the topic makes people tense.
The producer also reflects on how ‘no matter how woke we are’, a lot of people’s privilege is dependent on being blind to cateism. “Ranjith and Mari aren’t even calling people out; they are just telling their life stories. The very fact that the champion of the film comes from an oppressed community makes people uncomfortable. You expect purity from Dalit-Bahujan artists, but life is not like that, nor is art. It’s incredible that people like them and Neeraj Ghaywan have nonetheless managed to tell their stories,” she says.
Dominance of heterosexual, masculine, heteronormative
And while these filmmakers have managed to break barriers, Aditi reflects on how numerous other stories that aren’t ‘heterosexual, masculine, heteronormative’ remain untold. “I don’t think cinema is a medium of morality, but I do believe that it can be a medium of change. And that can only happen through representation, where people are allowed to tell their own stories,” she says.
Aditi also adds that the rising ticket prices don’t help matters, adding, “Cinema was once a space where families were drawn to the theatres. But today, a lower-income household cannot afford the ticket prices. Now, hyper-masculine cinema is the only way to draw in those who can afford to watch films, which is groups of men who buy single tickets.”
Aditi says there is an issue in the film industry that needs to be addressed at a systemic level. “Hindi cinema is a bit more progressive on this count, but South cinema is sorely lacking in terms of representation for women. There are so few of us behind the scenes. Our focus is often on sexual harassment, but for a woman to survive in this industry, that is at the end of the spectrum.”
When asked to elaborate, she says, “When a woman works here, she has to cross exclusionary bias and locker room jokes, which make it much more difficult. I have also faced this; they wouldn’t talk to a man as they do to me. You can see their brains combusting when they see a woman at the table. The only solution to this is structural change,” she rounds off.
