At the Sundance Film Festival, Girls Will Be Girls wins two awards, and Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal are “overwhelmed.”
At the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, actor-couple Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal’s first feature film, “Girls Will Be Girls,” took home two prizes. The India-US co-production documentary “Nocturnes” won an award at the festival’s annual ceremony in Park City, Utah.
Shuchi Talati’s film “Girls Will Be Girls” received the World Cinema Dramatic Competition Audience Award, while Preeti Panigrahi, who starred in it, got the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting. Anirban Dutta’s film “Nocturnes” took home the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Craft. “Girls Will Be Girls” is set at a boarding school in a little Himalayan hill town in northern India, according to the creators. It chronicles the journey of 16-year-old Mira, whose unfulfilled coming-of-age experiences are entwined with her mother’s rebellious awakening.
The movie is a combined Indo-French production from Blink Digital, Crawling Angel Films, Dolce Vita Films, and Pushing Buttons Studios, the joint business of Chadha and Fazal. Chadha and Fazal stated in a joint statement that they had not anticipated the “overwhelming response” to their Sundance debut production.
“This experience strengthens our conviction that diverse narratives with a global appeal must be championed and that storytelling has great power.” As performers, we have always yearned for compelling narratives, but obtaining such chances hasn’t always been within our control. It is encouraging to see our new performers getting this much praise for this reason. We are inspired to keep pushing the envelope and creating original tales by this accolade,” they said. According to Talati, “Girls will be Girls” was a really fulfilling and intimate experience.
The movie’s success at Sundance is a result of a committed crew working together. Like a lioness, Richa has fiercely guarded this narrative and movie. We hope it starts meaningful discussions on coming-of-age experiences that we don’t frequently get to witness on film. It’s encouraging to see our tale strike a chord with both reviewers and audiences,” she added.
“Nocturnes,” a joint production of Dutta’s Metamorphosis Film Junction and US-based Sandbox Films, takes place in the thick Eastern Himalayan woods. The official website of the gala states that “in the dark of night, two curious observers shine a light on this secret universe.” The nonprofit Sundance Organization, which finds and promotes independent artists and exposes people to their work, is hosting the Sundance Film Festival in 2024.
