Guneet Monga And Her First Movie

Brut India

Her movie "Period. End of Sentence." won an Oscar. But her very first movie was nearly taken off of theatres...  Guneet Monga spoke to Brut about her Bollywood journey.

Transcript

00:00Celebrate your small wins

00:22I think I was 23 years old

00:25moved to Bombay

00:27with money from my neighbor and

00:30Decided to you know, I just meet so many people. I remember how it started was that my neighbor told me that they wanted to make

00:38Studio and make like films of you know, cute babies for their parents like commissioned work and I was like, okay

00:45What is your budget for the studio? And I remember him saying 50 lakhs. I was like, why don't you give me 50 lakhs?

00:50I will go to Bombay and make a feature film and I literally moved to Bombay

00:58And

01:00Just anybody and everybody I knew I was like I have 50 lakhs. Do you have a story?

01:04I would love to be a producer. So

01:08we had set up a company and done the paperwork and

01:11Learned how to you know produce a film and met an amazing director writer director called Subhash Kapoor

01:18Who also had access to similar money and we came together and made the first film in

01:242006 which released in 2007. It was a children's film children cricket film

01:40I just could not handle

01:43The situation where cinemas were just like take your movie back because nobody talks about cricket right now India lost the World Cup

01:49They were like purani picture. They don't be any lagging

01:54I

01:56Ended up actually going to Delhi and going to my school blue wells

02:00And I asked my principal if she would get all the kids for 50 rupees and see the film

02:05I ended up booking a cinema near our school, which was

02:09Sapna Cinema Hall and morning show 50 rupees per kid. I

02:13booked the whole cinema in 10,000 rupees it was a thousand seater and

02:1850 rupees per kid 50,000 show 10,000 to the theater owner 40,000 was mine

02:23I and the kids loved the film

02:26You know there I could hear them together breathe when you I hear a thousand kids on the last ball and you know

02:32So I ended up then going school to school and did some

02:37300 plus screenings and made all the money back took nine months of my life

02:41But that day I was like if I do not return the money of my first investor, how will I be a producer?

02:48I

02:58Yeah, one of my mentor has been Sameer Bungara

03:02It's the most incredible amazing generous person. I've ever come across

03:07And he always told me celebrate your small wins, you know, so

03:12And

03:14That's a piece of advice because we're so busy working and hustling and you know getting to the next day

03:21we forget to

03:23Celebrate ourselves. We forget to enjoy our little things

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