With her recent success in making bankable commercial cinema on a big scale, director Sudha Kongara has shattered conventional prejudices against women behind the camera in the Tamil film industry
Sudha Kongara Prasad, an film director and screenwriter
Image: Balaji Gangadharan for Forbes India
Ponna irundukitu ennama padam pannarai. ‘Being a woman, you have made such a brilliant film’ is a backhanded compliment that often comes Sudha Kongara’s way. After two decades in the entertainment business, starting as a screenwriter, then as an assistant director to Mani Ratnam and eventually at the helm of her own films, Kongara believes that now is the time she has attained true power in the Tamil cinema industry.
This true power is simply having the choice to make whatever films she wants to make, in the way she wants to make them. That is tougher than it sounds, she tells Forbes India over a video call from her office in Chennai, because in a male-dominated industry with powerful, high-profile stakeholders involved with every project, there are 50 different opinions that people have about how you should go about making your film. “I was sidelined in my first film Drohi [2010], which got a limited release and tanked. My vision was corrupted by various influences and it led to a traumatic six-year hiatus,” says Kongara, who confesses to having contemplated leaving the film industry behind to make a career out of growing organic vegetables or running a restaurant.
(This story appears in the 22 October, 2021 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)