She has been an assistant director, ad filmmaker and a writer-director of out-of-the-box feature films. Ignoring every mandatory obstacle that an independent woman filmmaker must confront, here’s the adventure-strewn story of Manika Sharma, narrated in a conversation with Khalid Mohamed.

This exclusive interview with filmmaker Manika Sharma reveals her bold creative journey from assistant director to feature film storyteller, navigating Bollywood’s power structures, international advertising, and independent cinema with resilience and vision. From The Wishing Tree to the history-driven Girmitiya, Sharma discusses creativity, motherhood, funding challenges, AI’s impact on cinema, and the emotional and aesthetic influences shaping her craft. A compelling read for filmmakers, cinephiles, OTT platforms, talent scouts, gender discourse observers, and anyone following the future of new-age Indian storytelling and women-led cinema.

Finding a Voice in a Chaotic System

For starters, why hasn’t your voice as an independent filmmaker been heard loud and clear enough? Is it because you don’t have a publicity team?

No, I don’t have a publicity team, and I was just too caught up being a mom. I had a stint with ad films right after the theatrical release of my movie – The Wishing Tree (2017). I travelled and shot ads for brands like Bvlgari, Magnum Ice-Cream, Vaseline and Forever Mark diamonds.

I also wrote five feature films – Codewild, Moses and Clap and recently two feature films for a company based in Mauritius. One of them, Girmitiya-The Unsung Hero is showing in cinemas at Mauritius at the moment, while Dosti aur Diaries is under-production there.

Your first feature The Wishing Tree was a more than well-intentioned endeavour to promote the awareness for protecting our eco-system, among the children and adult audience alike. Why didn’t it get enough exposure? Because of the hostile reviews?

It was a battle for my producer Raajaysh Chetwal, Rhombus Films, to release The Wishing Tree theatrically, primarily because we had no funds for marketing.

We were invited to prominent platforms like The Kapil Sharma Show but Shabana (Azmi) was travelling at the time promoting a bigger film, so…

The Wishing Tree was made in a budget of Rs 14 crore. I began filming it in 2007 after raising funds independently from Gemini Studio (Chennai) and Zoom. The song, Earth, was picturised on Shabana in 2009. The Defence Ministry was taken in with the environment theme and allowed me to film atop the Pangong Lake on their Cheetah Chopper sortie, which is a highly sensitive zone today, where no one can flock to let alone do filming.

However, because of a lack of resources for post-production work, the final print was ready only in 2012 and was finally released in a few theatres in 2017. It was a decade long journey. I had shot the film on 35mm film negative, but the entire cinema ethos had shifted by 2017.

When Netflix noticed the canvas of the film, they were keen to acquire it, not only for its save-our-environment voice, but because it had a rare visual depth and was possibly the last works of the film stock discipline era.

In 2017 Vancouver Film School invited me for an interview on campus to talk about my movie releasing worldwide on Netflix. I was the only student across batches to have written and directed a film in a sparse budget of two million U.S. dollars.

Shabana Azmi, Saurabh Shukla and Rajit Kapur, besides a voice-over by Amitabh Bachchan – how did you get them to participate in the project? And did the film assume the shape which you wanted?  

I believed in my story. I had written this film after a life-altering moment in British Columbia while hugging a 1000-year-old tree.

I had shared a rapport with Shabana, as an assistant director on Tehzeeb. I showed up at her doorstep with a bound script, she read it, and said she would do it. So did Rajit, Saurabh, Mahabanoo-Kotwal and Makarand Deshpande.

I had shot with Mr. Bachchan in 2001 for a U.N. AIDS campaign. I met him at his home office, shared what I had shot, and he agreed to be the voice of my 6000-year-old Wishing Tree. His surrender to express the directorial vision of a tree that had witnessed eons touched me deeply. It’s rare to find a legend to be gung-ho for art’s sake.

Identity, Legacy and the Girmitiya Chronicle

Could you tell me about the genesis of Girmitiya-The Unsung Hero, written and produced by you? Why didn’t you direct it yourself?

Gajraj Films, started by two young producers got in touch with me last year. They wanted to make films deeply rooted in Mauritian history and its cultural social fabric. Girmitiya-The Unsung Hero is the story of a sixth-generation young entrepreneur, Aarush, who wants to sell his ancestral land in Mauritius since it’s ‘dead investment’. A call from a distant cousin in India informing him about his grandfather’s death turns things towards another direction. A book, Girmitiya: Memoirs, a gift from his grandfather arrives connecting Aarush to the indomitable struggle of his ancestors – of the indentured laborers who had left their families back in India under the tyranny of the British In the hope of a new life in an unknown land.

In effect, the film canvases this journey of two close friends who rose from indentured labourers to landowners of sugarcane fields, thereby transforming their destiny.

The film has been written by me. It was made on a tight budget; the producers could not afford my directorial intervention. They executed it with local actors and available resources.

Are you hopeful about getting its theatrical release in India or are you negotiating with OTT channels?

The Intellectual Property rights of Girmitiya are with me and to be honest, I intend to remake the film with an established production house and high-calibre actors in India.

The one running in theatres in Mauritius has been executed with a government grant and is more like a pilot project. Following Narendra Modi’s visit to Mauritius in March 2025, the subject of Girmits is in sharp focus. “India is committed to preserve the Girmitiya legacy,” he said in his speech.

In a social media post, you have said that it was inspired and co-written by your mother…can you elaborate on that?

My mother, Madhu Sharma is a major part of my film writing journey. She is a collaborator, a co-writer and a portal through whom I time travel. For Girmitiya, she gave me access to the 1890s. She was born in post-Independent India, she shared with me the British residue in social cultural politics which is fresh in her muscle memory. She is a gifted individual with a million characters and stories I can access at any given point in time. Together we are a force.

The second feature for Gajraj Films, Dosti aur Diaries is also co-written by her and me, a story of four friends who go through a turbulent college season.
Obviously, you have all the credentials to be a director who can call the shots? You have been assistant director on major Bollywood films? So, what are the obstacles in finding the suitable financial backers?

There are no obstacles. Perhaps only imagined ones. A compelling story will always carry collaborators in its current right to the end. I do believe that timing is the key. I feel my scripts from the past read more like novels and only when I honed into the screenplay craft, I became aware to what becomes possible when every scene and word impact the whole body of the screenplay.
With a deep respect for my own screenplay process I now feel absolutely ready to engage with co-creators on my movies. It is a different kind of capacitated excitement than ever before.

Of your ad films, which were your most creative ones?

The most exciting ones took me to international waters. Magnum Ice-Cream with Manish Malhotra which I filmed during the Cannes Film Festival was a blast. I was in the elevator with Martin Scorsese!

I also enjoyed the longer films for ICICI bank which I co-wrote with agency writers – Konkana Sen for Aura Account and the late Anil Kapoor for Senior Citizens’ Account.

Vaseline gave me an opportunity to shoot and be in the aura of women cricketers like Smriti Mandhana. Genderless, their sport is the only energy that one can feel around them.

Creative Identity, Power and the Road Ahead

Ad film making can be a thankless one, what with the hiring ad agencies and clients wanting changes and drastic alterations. And isn’t this sphere essentially male dominated?  

I don’t focus on that aspect even though it may be a fact. As a vision executor I really enjoy the process. The agencies and production houses sometimes get into stressful spaces, since there’s a lot of expectation and team members want to protect their jobs.

When such conflicts occur, which they often do, I stand in my space of stubborn gladness, impenetrable to agency and client pressures. I just bask in the creation of something unknown in a sense. Even within story, mood, vision boards it’s rewarding to observe what emerges from the unknown.
From what I’ve observed you have an aesthetic that is subtle and sensitive to the representation of women. Where does this stem from?

From my own journey as a woman in her 20s to now my late 40s, though not just Bollywood. I’ve travelled across continents with international teams and that has been huge learning. I have experienced life in all its brutality and beauty and finally learnt to walk the middle path with grace hopefully.

Which films and books or any other forms of art been a major influence on you?

Films like King Vidor’s War and Peace (featuring Audrey Hepburn), Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie and Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali have been revelations. And I was in an advertising programme in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, when I saw Titanic on a gigantic 11-storey amphitheatre screen. By the time I joined Asoka with Shah Rukh Khan in the title role, as an assistant in the direction team the pathway to the magic of cinema was opening. Asoka took my breath away as scenes were brought to life and emotion.  

My favourite book Pearl S Buck’s, The Good Earth shaped my visual landscape, so did Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (before it became a major motion picture). After reading Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of Geisha, I discovered that bringing a novel to life into the cinematic medium is rarely ever a match to the power inherent in its original writing.

You seem to have an innate talent for art décor and fluid shot takings. Ever thought of becoming a production director, cinematographer or even editor as a B plan?

Production Design excites me. But Cinematography is technically overwhelming.

I have played around with black and white photography and developed film negatives in the dark room and dodged light to create contrast but that’s it. My plan B is the launch of my fashion brand in three months. That’s something which may give full expression to my fashion aesthetic.

You’re never seen at the right places or on media platforms – without ‘mingling’ so to speak, how do you intend to become a household name? You don’t have a ‘killer streak’ or am I being presumptuous?

I’m in Dehradun in the midst of a tough season of life. My boy is already six and becoming self-sufficient. This homecoming to write my stories has been blessing.

I have a super killer streak, at the moment putting it to use to complete my action movie screenplay. You will see me in Mumbai in my element very soon.

How far are VFX, Artificial Intelligence and the next pop-up invention, likely to affect you? Can you comment specially on AI?

AI is already here in our creative veins. It is shaping and shifting the creative reality, but it cannot substitute directors ever. After all, the human mind is magnetic, mysterious and unmatched especially in comparison to collective intelligence data which will reshape the future (replace human jobs in a big way). Still, it can’t come close to the human consciousness.

Do you have a dream project in mind?

Moses – my next in Bollywood. It has my dream cast and a big visual landscape.

Do you find a ‘closed door’ policy in the Bollywood system? No connections mean no entry generally.  

Not true in my experience. Entry is open.

Have you ever faced one of those #MeToo like moments?

Yes with a few scumbags I have, I made them run for their lives. 

Any parting shot?

Get out of your own way!