Guneet Monga interview | On ‘Kill’, ‘Gyaraah Gyaraah’ and taking documentaries to the grassroots

Ahead of the release of ‘Gyaraah Gyaraah’, Guneet Monga, known for giving independent voices a global reach, talks about her production hustle and turning ‘Kill’ into a rage with Karan Johar

In Europe, independent producers are called tastemakers, but in India, that breed became almost extinct until a gutsy girl from Delhi emerged on the scene. Combining passion with pragmatism, Guneet Monga came through the ranks to sell absorbing Indian stories to the world. Tell her an idea whose time has come and Guneet will give it the right shape and size to make it commercially viable, festival-friendly, and award-worthy.

We woke up to Guneet’s touch with The Lunchbox. A decade and two Academy Awards later, she introduced us to what a classic genre film tastes like with Kill. A rare critic-friendly action thriller that has found life at the box office, Kill also marks Guneet’s Sikhya Entertainment’s second collaboration with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. The unlikely pair of independent voice and mass appeal is taking the partnership forward with Gyaraah Gyaraah, a police procedural that takes the shape of a mystery thriller, releasing this week on Zee5.

“I am innovating by the day,” says Guneet, in Delhi to catch up with her ailing mother-in-law. She describes herself as a “producing geek” who will do whatever it takes to make a film happen. “I crowd-funded films when there was no structure around the process for Peddlers and Haramkhor. I have worked so hard for many years to open the doors of foreign production and distribution companies like Pathe to collaborate with us.”

In our film industry, Guneet says, “We need more producers who are willing to travel that extra mile and do innovation in the business of cinema.” Post COVID, she says, things became “challenging for all of us”, pushing producers to look for fresh ideas to keep the audience invested. “We are a 100% equity industry. I can disrupt it one story at a time. I am not a studio. I can’t do it at scale. It takes two to three years to make a film. So it is incredible that family-run production houses are joining hands with us.” Excerpts from an interview...

How do you see your partnership with Karan Johar?

It is empowering. I being independent and Dharma being as commercial as Hindi cinema can be, I see it as an ongoing good partnership of content and scale that provides pan-Indian accessibility. I think Karan is also a cinephile at heart. He saw the potential in The Lunchbox and was very supportive when others were like ye kaya bana diya (what have you made). A decade later we again came together with Kill which is again a one-of-its-kind attempt that has brought extreme action as a genre to India.

What made you experiment with the classic action genre in India?