“In a sliding door version of my life, I am probably the doctor/lawyer my father wanted me to be,” that’s Mansi Jain for you. A confident filmmaker without a filmy background, Mansi grabbed attention as writer-director of acclaimed short film Chhuri . She is also the writer of Neha Dhupia’s no-holds-barred podcast #NoFilterNeha and writer and creative director of BFFs with Vogue — Season 2 on Colors Infinity.
FridayReview caught up with her after her short film Sab Theek Hai was screened at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala. The 18-minute film had won the IFP Audience Award at Columbia University Film Festival (CUFF) in 2017 and International Film Audience Award at the Brussels Short Film Festival this year.
The film tells the story of Asha (a brilliant Seema Pahwa), a middle-aged mother, who visits her young, independent daughter, Natasha. There, Asha pours her heart out to Natasha and says that she wants to walk out of the marriage, much to the shock of the daughter who initially fails to understand her mother’s predicament. So it is left to Asha to fend for herself.
Mansi Jain
“People from different cultures, genders and backgrounds could identify with Asha or Natasha, or both. It’s like living a dream to see a story so personal to you resonate with a wide cross-section of people,” says Mansi in an email.
Mansi says that it was triggered by an incident but became a lot bigger when she observed women around her.
Speaking up
“From affluent female friends in Delhi to working class friends in the US, so many women are going through this inner, silent crisis. Problems like these, problems of the heart, especially for older women, aren’t always considered problems. I’ve heard so many people say “it’s not so bad”, “be grateful for what you have”, “stop being ungrateful” to people who aren’t happy where they are. The title Sab Theek Hai works for so many who keep telling themselves all the time that it’s okay even though deep down we know that nothing is fine! It takes a lot of courage to say that this is not working,” she says.
Mansi, who started out as an assistant director in Rajat Kapoor’s acclaimed film Aankhon Dekhi and co-writer and associate director of Moh Maya Money , had written Sab Theek Hain as part of her thesis while pursuing her masters in screenwriting at Columbia University School of the Arts, New York. The script won a grant at CUFF 2016 and that eventually funded the movie. She is now working on developing it as a dramedy feature and a television series for a New York-based company. Gushing about her cast, especially Seema, she says, “I worked with her Aankhon Dekhi. She is a legend. When I started writing the script, I only had her in my mind.”
The conversation then veers to Chhuri , her film that went viral on social media. It is about Mira (Tisca Chopra), who settles scores with her husband Sharad (Anurag Kashyap) and his girlfriend Kiara (Surveen Chawla) in the smartest way possible. It was an adaptation of Custody , Mansi’s first semester film at Columbia. “It was set in New York and made by a crew of seven people. Five years later, Chhuri happened in India with big actors, a bigger budget and huge crew! It was gratifying to know that my story was universal. The same story written to be made in New York with an American family worked completely in Mumbai with an Indian family,” she avers.
Talking about the cast of Chhuri , especially about Anurag, Mansi says that though the character is not that big he’s the reason why the cat and mouse game exists. “I had loved him in Akira . I think he’s a really good actor,” she says. Both Chhuri and Sab Theek Hai were nominated for Filmfare Awards 2018.
Mansi says that it was not a conscious decision to portray women who try to rise above the situations they are in through these films.
Bold characters
“It is easier to write and sell characters who make choices and take action but passive characters are more fascinating for me to watch and write. In fact, I think Asha is generally a passive, accepting person who, on that one day, decides to say to everyone ‘bahut ho gaya’ . It’s the same with Mira. She’s clearly aware of the other woman and has been ignoring it for a while. I think a few of my characters are people who just want to be left alone in peace but things won’t let them,” Mansi says.
Looking back, she considers herself lucky in that she got money for both films because the right people loved the scripts. “There was never a decision to make short films. I want to make films. That’s all I know. Short, feature, series…whatever,” she adds. But she can’t choose between writing and directing since she likes to navigate both. “Of course, writing is harder than directing and so I would definitely gravitate towards that. I write practically every day. I don’t have to struggle to make time for it. And directing is how I make my writing come alive. The two are almost inseparable in a way for me,” she says. Mansi points out that she owes it all her training at Columbia and the drama programme she did at Harvard before that.
While #NoFilterNeha (NFN) and BFFs with Vogue , both with Neha, may look out of place in her career, Mansi wants to look at them in a different way. “My love is for narrative fiction but it’s always a blast to work with friends. I met Neha because of Moh Maya Money. When she wanted to turn producer with a podcast, she wanted me to write it. That’s how NFN happened. BFF followed,” she points out.
“I am also rewriting a lot of my screenplays, a thriller-horror short film might go on the floor later in the year,” she adds.
