10 years ago, this month, without thinking through about what the entrepreneurial life actually entails, we launched Film Companion. The name came from a line by the American philosopher and film critic Stanley Cavell. He said: The writing about film that has meant most to me has the power of a missing companion. Our ambition was to be that missing companion, that friend you discuss movies, shows, trends and pet peeves with. You don’t have to agree but the conversation is robust and invigorating.
It’s been a tumultuous ride. Creating credible, informative entertainment journalism, in video and text, that pays for itself is a formidable challenge in any landscape but more so in the current climate in which everything can be bought, including social media posts. But Film Companion was never a business – numbers are not my forte. It was a shared passion. Over the years, the team grew larger but one constant remained – a great love for storytelling and popular culture. Everyone or nearly everyone in the team was a consumer and a critic. In our office, opinions and arguments and those narrowed eyes, I’m-judging-you-for-loving-this looks were par for course. I remain the sole defender of Befikre.
I have fond memories of our shoots – walking and talking with Shah Rukh Khan in Lisbon for Beneath the Surface in 2016 – that was the first branded show we did; our first actors roundtable in 2019 in which eight actors, from across the country, including Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Alia Bhat, Vijay Sethupathi, Vijay Deverakona and Manoj Bajpayee participated; the Front Row series, a conversation in front of a live audience – I got teary when I walked on stage for the first one with Deepika. The world was just emerging from the shadow of Covid and to be in a room with people, wearing masks, sitting one seat apart, made me emotional. There was also Tape Cast, a show in which artists spoke to other artists, prodded by questions we put on a tape that played through the interaction. The first public interaction between Vicky Kaushal and Katrina Kaif took place on Tapecast in March 2019. When they got married, I was labelled Sima Aunty from Indian Matchmaking. There was also Cheat Sheet, hosted by Sneha Menon Desai – a show that broke down the mechanics of making movies. Sneha took viewers behind the scenes of how artists live and function – her conversation with intimacy co-ordinator Aastha Khanna and another show with bodyguards in Bollywood has over a million views. It’s a matter of great pride that Cheat Sheet was used as teaching material in film schools. Or that our 2019 list of the 100 greatest performances of the decade created a massive stir.
I believe that Film Companion moved the needle forward for entertainment journalism. I’m proud to say that we were pan-India before the Baahubali franchise. Film Companion South covered the major cinemas of the South with rigor and verve. We also had contributors reporting on the Bengali, Marathi and Punjabi film industries. One of our over-arching ambitions was to move the needle for the film industry. With this aim, we created O Womaniya, in partnership with Ormax Media and Amazon Prime Video – a first-of-its-kind report on women in the entertainment business. The idea was to have concrete numbers, year after year, that recorded the skewed gender equation, prompted conversation and hopefully, change.
Through this journey, one of the great joys for me has been creating opportunities for others. Cinema and the Indian film industry has shaped and enriched my life in immeasurable ways and I want, as much as I can, to pay it forward. One of our flagship initiatives was Take Ten, in collaboration with Netflix’s Fund for Creative Equity – a program that found and funded new filmmakers to make short films in the first year and series pilots in the second. Again, I found myself getting teary in Cannes, because the crew of Payal Kapadia’s Grand Prix winning film All We Imagine As Light included Suyash Kamat – a finalist of our Take Ten series. In 2023, we also curated and ran The Himalayan Film Festival in Ladakh – the ambition was to celebrate and showcase filmmakers from across the Himalayan states, filmmakers who often struggle to find their place in the business.
Film Companion has had a blazing 10-year-run. As we wind up the show, I want to express my deepest gratitude to the wonderful people who toiled in the trenches with me. Each one of you got behind all my nutty ideas and multi-tasked beyond the call of duty to make them come alive. The platform flourished only because of the stellar team. And thank you to the wonderful community we built – Film Companion has over 2.8 million subs across five YouTube channels, over 15 million unique users on our website, over two million across social media and we reach a few thousand on WhatsApp. Our viewers and readers have showered us with fulsome praise and nasty jibes and all of it has only helped us to strive harder and do better.
Film Companion lives on in FC Studios– our speciality division for long-form storytelling. Our first documentary special will soon be on a streaming service – hopefully the start of many exciting projects to come. As one of my favourite actors once said, Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost.
Onwards and Upwards.
