Guneet Monga | You Shine, I Shine - Women Empowerment | Talks at Google

[Music] hey everybody happy friday and thank you all for attending our virtual talk today my name is roman matla and my preferred pronouns are he and him i'm the director for diversity and employment and employee engagement at google across asia pacific um i've spent the last almost 20 years in singapore where my family and i have made our home i'm a dad i'm a husband i'm a wannabe barbecue chef with a website and all i ride a classic royal enfield motorcycle just for kicks um we are so excited to be here as part of i am remarkable week i am remarkable is a google initiative that strives to empower everyone particularly women and underrepresented groups to celebrate their achievements in the workplace and beyond and we are thrilled to welcome gunit manga today an oscar-winning film producer with us for a conversation on how she is using her position as one of the most influential women producers in india to facilitate change and normalize gender equality gunit i'm going to hand it over to you for an introduction please hi roman thank you thank you everybody at google for having me here at i am remarkable i've been very excited to be here with you all of you and to introduce myself i think i am a girl with dreams uh started from there uh and i set up a company called sick entertainment 13 years ago and in these and in this short period of time we've produced more than 40 films uh i pinched myself uh with of the events that happened in this 13 years we've got a bafta nomination for one of our features called lunchbox we got nominated uh for the oscar twice for two separate short films and uh period end of sentence which i'm so grateful to be part of so honored to be a part of that i executive produced won the uh oscar in 2019 as a shock in the short dark court category um having and uh and out of the films that i have produced i've had several films premiere at cannes at toronto at venice at sundance and it's allowed me to travel the world it's allowed me to put our stories out there and that is what i do so i stand here in front of you as a film producer and i run a company called secure entertainment well welcome kunit and thank you for joining i am remarkable week for those of you who may not be familiar with this vet with this event yet i am remarkable week is a digital experience celebrating the power of diversity inclusion and allyship while encouraging everyone to celebrate their own achievements before we get started though we'd like to encourage all of you in the audience today to use youtube chat to post your comments and questions to we'll be reading these uh during our q a later on and answering all of your questions so let's uh let's dive into the fireside chat um we're going to do a couple of different themes so i'm going to start with your journey and if you can you know how was your journey as a film producer and what led you to the film industry was it always your dream do you remember a specific moment which made you decide to seek a career in the film industry or fighting for gender equality yeah so i studied mass communication and i always wanted to be in a industry where i could work with a lot of people i really didn't know how it will pan out but i was fascinated by media i think from childhood i've been a storyteller i have weaved in my own stories and told my own stories just the fact and the magic that you can take it to a bigger audiences around the world uh fascinated me i started as an intern for my best friend's mother who was a production coordinator in international films and i was her photocopy girl and throughout college i interned with her and i learned a lot on just being in an office that makes films and that's the moment i knew i was in my still a teenager and i just knew that i wanted to be in films and i wanted to be the boss of that office which was the film producer and i just knew that moment i wanted to be there and as you know life grew and agency grew and i was able to construct a career in this journey i think there is a conscious understanding of stories that we tell i don't ever want to take the audience for granted i don't ever want to be in a place where you know the two hours that people give us to consume our stories i want to i i do think i do reflect on what are they taking back so that thought um informs a lot of our decisions so from das vidanya which was done in 2008 to oscar winning short a film documentary called period end of sentence also in 2018 to the most recent poglet in 2021 what guides your diverse film choices you know there is definitely a conscious effort but it is also stories that just speak to me and um i think our choices define who we are you know and what we choose uh anything that we choose to tell a story it takes the next two years to three years of my life i will be working towards that story putting all the elements together i mean filmmaking is a collective process i can't take credit for all the work i've collaborated with some of the most amazing filmmakers and hundreds of people to and keep them you know encouraged every day to show up and to be able to continue with our intention of telling the story that we are so it it has to excite us every morning for two years till the time we finish it till the time marketing is done until the time it releases till the time people start off around the world and then talking about it so um i think something that really speaks to me that much is something that i'm ready to commit to so i take my time to commit to a story but uh once i do i just want to expand its universe you know i just want to make sure that everybody around the world knows about it are as many people and how is the best way like we can make this we can build this we can you know and we can take it out there so um i think stories have stories have a way of choosing me actually fantastic um during an interview in 2019 you said and i quote the world doesn't prepare you for success it prepares you for failure get up again be resilient and you've also been quoted as saying i own my own hustle and i'm proud of my hustle would you like to share some of that journey in some of those moments that got you to where you are today yeah so i think there is constant judgment there is constant judgment on what you uh you know it starts with what how you look what you wear how you talk there's so many layers of judgment that we're constantly ready to write off people you know so i have been on the other end being a very young producer in india film producers are people who finance a lot of movies who come from money uh it that that is just how the indian film industry is built i don't i come from a very very humble family um my parents and i used to stay in a rented house for 100 a month um in an apartment so i i raise these stories and i raise money for every film so i've always been at a point where people are like um there must be somebody above you right like you must be having a boss right i was like no i run my own company no how so i've always been on it's like i don't know you know it's just how it is i figured a way i raise money i tell these stories and uh and i've found investors and i've made powerpoint presentations like any business plan like any entrepreneur like any startup i've done that in the film industry so i've always had that kind of reaction uh and also being very young so i think the world really it's just failure every day you know because this judgment seeps in and then you're just struggling to stand back up but that's where the magic lies you know you have to just get up and keep going the first film that i ever produced was a film called say salam india it was a children cricket film and it released we were planning to release it when india was running for the world cup in 2007 but india actually released the week when india lost the elementary round the first preliminary round and came out and no cinemas wanted to even touch the film and it was my neighbor who had given me hundred thousand dollars as my first set of investment and i didn't even know how i will ever go back home so i ended up self distributing the movie booking morning shows in single screen cinemas booking schools filling up getting a pre-commitment of uh how of filling up a thousand-seater cinema for one dollar per child and booking that entire cinema for two hundred dollars that show would be thousand dollars and i would make eight hundred dollars from there and i ended up doing 350 shows like that you know it took nine months of my life but we were able to make all the money back and that is what taught me resilience that is what taught me you just can't let the system tell you this is how it happens you know the minute you say okay this is given these are the cards that i'm dealt with how do i go around it that's where curiosity comes in that's where you even begin having different kind of conversations because why not you know who's stopping thought processes to excel so i think there are beautiful uh ways of distributing films which have not really been captured and over a period of time like you know with lunchbox uh like the treaty in india between india and france the treaty was signed in 1985 and i was the first one to use it in 2012. so there are all these structures available but it is what curiosity leads you from one thing to another one question to another and as you find that answer you have to keep moving you can't let you can't just keep down and say okay this is not for me or i've never said that i've just been like okay this door is shut why not you know i i remember i was when i was i when i turned 18 my dad told me you should be an insurance agent and he put me in a he put me in a life insurance school and he thought that he will go sell we were like extremely you know lower middle class family and he just thought that i will have a permanent income month on year and year when my clients renew their insurance and he thought he would get his friends to buy that insurance so i went and gave i went and studied and gave exams to be an insurance agent i became an insurance agent and i was just fascinated by the stationary the energy and i was just eligible to be an insurance agent and my dad did the selling of on my license he was getting his friends to buy insurance from me um and the one thing that i took away from that insurance school was that you're actually going up to people knocking their door and saying you know you might just die why don't you save some money so that your family can then be better off and the social circuit that we inhabited you know everybody just live day on day you know you can't imagine thinking life beyond this because you're just really living day to day so the one thing that i learned from there which is always stayed with me uh and they taught us this in school and it said uh nine people will say no to you and then one person will say yes so keep going you know because that door of yes is going to keep coming so you have to keep going and that has become such a deep knowledge in my life as you know you're financing independent films that you know their people don't know their actors i've worked with more than 25 first-time directors um and they don't know their previous work to vouch on it but all these films have been beautifully put out there and have built a beautiful business and almost an industry here of so many incredible actors technicians directors writers um and it's thriving now with the expanse of digital market but it all happened because i was like i get excited on rejection so i i get very excited i'm just like okay i'm counting my rejections i'm just like okay ninth done my tenth is coming if you have to say no just say no quickly so i can move on to the next so that's how it's been my thought process to every film that i've put out there i have knocked so many doors for financing it for distributing it for marketing it for making it and i'm just like okay you're saying no that's great that's it let's move on see you later fantastic i'm i'm so gonna take that away the one out of one out of ten right and just keep going own that hustle um you have been voted one of the top 12 women achievers in the global entertainment industry by the hollywood reporter and among the top 50 indians changing india by india today the hollywood reporter called you the most prolific producer of a new wave of cinema so what role does or do these recognitions play in your journey and where do you go from here i mean they're encouraging uh definitely they're encouraging and and very grateful for the world to see uh see the work but i just feel i just got started you know i uh after 13 years of making movies i feel i've just understood the business even better and there are new opportunities coming all the time and and you know you i mean it's one thing that you build an opportunity and the other thing is that there is opportunity lying there you walk straight into it and you're like how do i own it you know what what piece of it belongs to me here you know and how do i make the best use of this so i think uh even the pandemic actually was uh while it was hard on uh a lot of us but i we were at sikkia able to um you know tell to to reinvent some storytelling we did a detective we did a uh we did a detective series which was interactive and we shot it in our office and we sold that whole series uh and it allowed us to keep our lights on you know and it allowed us to continue paying rents um we turned our office into a set and we had separate units shooting it we got deep into podcasting we got deep into short films uh we you know pushed ourselves away from long feature films so one has to continuously i think uh try new things and the recognitions help on the way but they don't define us uh they just they just help us keep going and and opening more doors you know so here i am talking to you about this so i think recognitions definitely help opening more doors and then it is your journey what you do with that open door so let's talk about like a big recognition right so in april of this year you were conferred the french honor the knight of the order of arts and letters the second highest civilian french honor to uh for your contributions to world cinema and the effort towards women empowerment now this is this honor is one of the many proofs of kunits diverse work as a filmmaker with a diverse range of content and the invaluable contribution that you've given to world cinema what did that moment feel like for you very humbling again very grateful like i said initially i think um india and france had signed a treaty um in 1985 for co-production i was the first one to use it in 2012 for lunchbox premiered at cannes uh film festival and both won awards there and followed a beautiful journey of putting it out in the world um and it's just so humbling to be recognized for the efforts um and for being able to continue pursuing the arts because how many of us really get to do that you know so uh i feel uh the french have been so ahead of the curve and uh they're so in love with indian cinema but as indian cinema has progressed we've also become really uh we've really been you know just within the system so uh i was able to break that system a bit and and structure it in a way that it allowed the story to also travel besides the the script and the story and the direction was magical and beautiful uh but the structure and the financing of the film allowed it to expand its boundaries so uh definitely um very very humbling uh did not see it coming uh did i was just like really the you know things like this also happen so it's just you know and then you just get back to work there's an awesome instagram photo of you wearing that that uh that metal and it was amazing to see that um i i am remarkable is really about finding your voice and getting comfortable with speaking your truth now in the past you've said you shine i shine and you also dedicated this recent french honor to every girl with a dream saying continue to dream freely and contin and create fearlessly so when and why did you adopt this motto and what takes you so close to that goal of women empowerment you know it's it's very it's deep rooted actually um i have seen my my i've i've my mother is a gorgeous gorgeous woman and i've just seen her be so underconfident uh always you know putting yourself behind um and almost losing your voice in the system you know and uh i feel we've we have we've had conditionings that we've grown up with and now is the time with internet with the digital experience we are getting aware we're just beginning to get aware and i think we've built we're built in a world where uh we are told you're each other's competition you know because there are opportunities are so little but that's what i really want to break because there is enough and more opportunities for each one of us you know it's almost like when one woman or one person puts out their story they open the door for hundreds of us to come through and that's what has happened over and over again and you know god bless my parents i mean uh i i i wish they were here to see this world i wish they were here to see how we discuss this and talk about it now it was not like this two decades ago we were not so aware and on on daily basis we are learning self-love we are talking about mental health we are talking about inclusivity and that is the that is the core of all of us and our being in our work so um it's just something which is very very it's something that matters to me it's something that matters very deeply to me and uh and i saw that come to life with period end of sentence it was a bunch of school girls uh 13 14 year old girls in la who decided to put together a movie who actually decided to donate a pad machine and they associated with an ngo in india and they were fundraising doing yoga thorns and bake sales to get money for a pad machine that they can install one pad machine on that journey they thought why don't we just document this process and if we can shoot a film on this process then maybe we can put that film out there and people can donate more and not just one we can donate hundreds and and those girls sitting there empowered girls in harper in the little village in india who who were being filmed as the machine came in and everyday new challenges raw material runs out electricity runs out then you need to get this and i was just so happy observing this just like you know you have to just dream and put it out there and we don't even know what the universe has in store for us so we are holding ourselves back majorly we are judging ourselves we are internalizing all kinds of judgment so how do we let that banter aside and keep moving forward and magic happens when one woman empowers another and when you see uh one person shining through you're just like okay so many of us can also do it it's possible it's possible for us from being from india to be out there you know so uh that from here and i've been thinking about that and uh i think moving forward i want to tell brown stories for rest of the world and maybe tell them in english language you know which has an even even longer even wider footprint so and now is the world now is the time that it even allows us to do this so how do we you know how do we not be shy of our dreams and how can we freely ask because we don't we we judge our dreams we hold ourselves back we're just like okay this is not for me maybe i'm not being maybe i'll you know we don't let the idea just get out there and i'm i am an example of asking questions all the time you know letting feeding into the curiosity uh feeding into that intuition and it's okay to fail it's part of life but then it's okay to also stand up you will just be more aware you will just be more um you know and and another thing that i just want to say that we have to also learn to be our own validation people you know so we keep giving our valuations to a senior to somebody else to another person in charge i learned it the harder way i learnt it over the years but it's just been now it's a process where you're just like okay i can own it i can uh even hustler as a term was a bad word it was almost like you're a wheeler you know and that's when i was just like no i own this hustle you know i'm i'm moving the blocks i'm and you almost feel like every day you have you feel like this burden of expectations you feel burden of reality of lack of money or lack of opportunities of lack of expression but how do we respond to it on daily basis what are we creating on daily basis as our response to it and you feel like in one day you've not moved anything and then suddenly a month passes and then suddenly a quarter passes and then at the end of the year you're like oh my god so much happened but it is all about all that one plus one plus one that i would have to be good and over over a decade i feel i moved a mountain you know but that's just one day at a time putting yourself out there and putting yourself out there asking the universe to guide you and and the universe talks to you it does gosh i hope everybody here is taking notes i mean this is incredibly powerful and thank you so much for sharing that um i want to pivot a little bit and i want to talk a little bit about uh indian women rising and your co-fun founding of this to uplift indian women content or sorry female content creators across the globe you've co-founded the cinema collective called indian women rising which aided the run of the critically acclaimed short film b2 at the oscars so what was your inspiration behind starting this community and what kind of platform are you providing to female content creators through this community absolutely again personal story i did not have the kind of opportunities that are available now it was very hard to make independent movies and to be seen to be heard and and even when you you actually feel like you won a battle by just finishing the shoot raising the money and finishing the shoot and you feel like okay i have achieved a whole i have one i have finished a huge huge assignment a huge task i was able to see through this and that's where the second layer of actual work starts which is marketing and distribution and that has been my biggest learning that if you don't understand marketing and distribution as well how far will your journey of creating the content take you so uh and that is there's a lot of lack of awareness there is no government support uh in india we don't get government support for content uh there's no grants there is no schools teaching us this and that is where i felt i wish i had help a decade ago i had films reaching out being selected at the biggest film festivals but i did not have the money or the um or the uh even the know-how how do you go hire a pr how do you who do you contact how do you even book hotels room i remember in 2010 we were nominated we would not we were uh selected for a film at the venice film festival and uh those were the times when used to call people to actually book an apartment uh to try and there was no there was no days of booking it online there were no websites to see and we just knew it was venice film festival and i booked a large apartment we wired the money and just when i landed there we realized that the film festival was in lido it's a whole island 45 minutes by my water taxi and that tax was also expensive i was just like but it was supposed to be venice film festival so i bought home apartment you know so we didn't know you me yeah so that all those experiences i feel like now that i have a voice i have um and my my company is doing the work that they are doing i was actually talking to tayara kashukurana my one of my co-founders and i said you know we need to do something which just focuses on amplifying which just focuses on discovering and amplifying i think everybody gets the end of gets to the end of making a piece of content it can be a documentary it can be a short it can be a feature they somehow find the money they somehow make it there is so much passion resilience it's beautiful all first-time journeys are just magical on how it all comes together and you feel like gold you feel like a winner just reaching the end of your shoot just just getting those many resources and then they're not prepared for the world to just reject them and there will be a bottleneck for marketing and distribution and you have to then stand in the same queue you were just like i don't need you guys you know and you have to stand in the same queue for distribution because you made your film or any piece of content outside the system but then you need validation of the system for acceptance and for distribution and i said that's where everything falls between cracks and i wish we had such structures we had such systems and that's when tyra and i went and spoke to ikta kapoor and ruchika kapoor from balaji and they are a studio here and even before we were able to finish our sentence we were just like we want to set up our marketing distribution fund we even before we were finishing it was like yes i'm on let's do this and uh and all this led to actually karishma reaching out to me karishma the director of bittu reaching out to me and saying i need help and i was like i'd love to help you but i just wish that there's a structure and it's not just one off every time and that's what led to indian women rising and we are here to support films we are here to tell stories uh we are here to take films and celebrate women filmmakers um and double down on them so that they can get more work they can get more press they can get more marketing they can hire the best pr they can be out there and not lose out on opportunity because of lack of knowledge or lack of resources so that's what led us to create indian women rising and that is our absolute ambition and there are there are proper stats you know which uh the the statistics say that less than five percent women in india are directors and how do we even change them we change them by celebrating them we change them by celebrating their short films to begin with how does i mean you enter a room how does some how do how does it happen that a young man is okay to direct a two million dollar movie and maybe a woman is not you know and that is the subconscious uh way of responding so we came together to market to market so much that everybody talks about it use our relationships and all the social media to put uh the filmmaker out there so that we hope over the next decade that stats changes and it really moves up you know and there are yeah there are more jobs there are more opportunities and it's really the least people do right now so yeah yeah i just you think about how many doors that's going to open so yes over the next decade we'll be watching closely and i'm sure this is going to make a massive impact um hey listen if you remember when we met the first time a couple of a couple of weeks back and you shared with me that you're a curious person you know and you're brave enough to ask freely so can you share with us how asks have opened up so many doors and possibilities for you yes so in 2010 one of the examples uh in 2010 i was nominated for a short film called kavi directed by greg helvey in the oscars in top five and uh i had just come off of a huge personal loss i just lost both my parents and being the only child it was just very disillusioning and i'd left i can't i was born brought up in denny i left delhi lock stock barrel to move to bombay um and just figure out wanting a job in this industry and you know whatever skill set i have learned interning at film offices in delhi and i was just like i want to be in bombay where the hindi film industry is and the action is happening and somewhere around that i've supported a filmmaker and produced a short and that suddenly got nominated in the best film and won the student oscar and got the best film and i i just wanted to go there i just wanted to go and attend the festival at the theater attend the awards at the theater i mean it's the it's the mecca of uh all of our all us filmmakers and i know the resources i didn't have the resources i didn't have always that you need to have a certain bank balance to get the u.s visa i didn't even know where to start from so i just wrote emails and i wrote emails to all the rich people that i knew and this was 2010. you know the rich people that i knew was richard branson i mean i knew i mean i knew off you you're right yeah yeah you know mr radha data you know and just just the biggest people around and there is their pr i used to keep searching for their office call their office and tell them that hi this is guripong i'm the pride of india i have a short film that is nominated for an academy award do you think you can fund my trip just like who are you the pride of birth self self you i i don't know how i had that confidence but i really just wanted to go and um i just had three weeks to uh figure this whole thing out to figure a trip to figure out how we are going figure out visas and i never wanted to go alone i wanted to take the boy from the slums who's who was the main lead and i wanted to take my first assistant director with us who worked on the film and i just kept writing emails emails i wrote to every possible airline i wrote to every possible forex exchange uh anyone that had international footprint i was writing 20 25 emails a day asking that do you think you can sponsor do you think you can help me do you think i just want to and i had a very clear ask just tickets one week stay you know uh i and a visa and to figure out how can help for the visa and after a week of trying to write these emails or getting a lot of rejection not getting a lot of responses i just wrote to the president of india as one does yes just and i got a call from their office uh from honourable mrs pratham apartheid i got a call from office that you know what is it that you're looking for i said i am the pride of india do you think uh you can find my trip to the oscars i'm do you think and i didn't even and i didn't even ask you know there's a style there is an art of asking you just don't go in with your big ask you know and on your first conversation you so you warm up to it you know they have to know you as a person invest in you and your dreams and your energy so i just requested that you know if she would be open to watching our movie and if we would i have never seen the president's home uh in delhi if there is if we can come screen our little movie there so she said sure that is possible so i was like if you send me a letter then i can ask an airlines i'd remember kingfisher airlines wrote back to me i had written to them and they wrote back to me saying we don't even fly outside india but if you ever go but if you ever have within india needs you can let us know and uh i wrote i said so i told them why don't you send me an email or a that time there was fax machine why don't you send me a fax and i will then send that to the kingfisher office and ask them for delhi tickets mumbai to delhi i took the whole crew to rashford and there we met many other ministers and one conversation led to another and there was a screening held at another minister's house uh mr prithviraj johan he was the science and technology minister then he said let me host a screening at my house he got many more ministers and after he saw the film he spoke to us he spoke to me and i said sir you know i really want to be able to figure out how we can go and if you know we can get an etiquette from air india if we can get visas and his and it was done and uh a journalist got in touch with me a journalist got in touch with me and i and i was very honest about you know saying that we don't have the money to go i'd love to go i'd love to go experience it how this works uh and the journalists wrote a huge article saying film selected for the oscars but no money to go and cox and kings got in touch with the journalists saying we'd love to sponsors the stay so i think the universe has your back if you ask and if you really want and need something the universe really looks after you and it's magical when that happens if we don't we judge the process and we don't let it happen so in three weeks i was able to get visas for all of us i was able to get sagar a passport he didn't even have an official address to get a party to get a passport to get we we were welcomed at the american embassy to say we you know welcome your selected for an oscar you know just writing emails to everyone and one thing you know and that is the power of i think again you shine eye shine that is the power of putting more people out there so that collectively we can all take more space because it's there yeah 100 so hey listen i know a lot of us are really anxious to get to the live q a so we've got a couple of minutes left um of uh i really want to lean into this this is um around uh diversity equity inclusions this is my bag um in your 20s you would wear saris and color your hair gray like i do um even you went so far as to pray for spectacles just to be taken seriously and you were quoted to have faced ageism so what were those situations or or difficulties um to make you take those kind of steps right what would you and and most importantly what would you suggest to someone who might be going through something similar you know it's a very good question uh it's all of us coming from our conditioning not knowing enough and internalizing our own take from every meeting i just always felt unheard i felt under expression i just felt like my suggestions were not taken in a room you know uh and i've had people just ask me how old are you again you know when i was 20 i was 24 when i started being i was 21 when i produced my first film and i was 24 when i uh produced justinia and uh moving forward from there and and 26 when i was doing gangs of asia which became a huge huge cult but uh while you're putting those films together in those corporate rooms i've just seen people walk through me not even acknowledge me you know like i'm i'm speaking to them and they're just like okay this is a this is just a young child we need to indulge in millions of dollars conversation and that's when i've internalized that deeply and i'm like how do i get noticed so i wanted to i wanted to be big in my size in wear double layer clothes wear sardis color my hair gray if anybody ever asked me how old are you that was like the most dreadful question for me and uh i would say guess i would never say i would say yes yeah and and this is me at 26 27 they'd say 30's 40's like yes yes an accomplishment but that is me i'm still not forty i'm still three four years away from it uh but i love it but yeah now i have specs i have won zero specs to be taken seriously because that was my way of responding to it hi um miranda i will just answer this question uh so the question is did you always get excited on rejection or is it a skill you learned please teach us that rejections are hard i'm not going to sugarcoat it rejections are hard but i think it is a skill that you learn and how you respond to it it's very important the power always lies in the response you know uh personal rejection or a professional rejection uh they can always be seen as a personal failure or you start judging your own you lose the lack of faith i think that's where self-love and faith comes in and you have to just get back on track and just understand that how many days am i going to you know feel this way and how do i choose to respond it so the minute we change the response and we put the power back to ourselves the rejection doesn't feel so bad and you start again because uh it's going to happen one way or the other you know so yeah uh gunit you've achieved so much how do you choose and decide what project direction to take your life in next uh what project and direction to take your life uh i would say it's intuitive and over the years you get better at these and and like i said you know our choices define us they describe us at the end of the day when we go uh somebody is going to join dots and watch all the movies i was part of i think about it you know i think about that of what is it that i'm going to leave behind for people to watch and what was it that i was able to create and be part of it so it does help me choose wisely uh not choose because movies are not a transaction for me uh they are not just another deal to close and to work on it's it's a part of my life and uh i think when that passion and your work comes together uh you're just like what am i choosing you know next two years to do and it's really important to me that the story is worthwhile the story has some sort of impact it gets me very excited um yep green what do you consider the hardest moment of your career and how did you overcome roman can you can you can you hear me and i'm so sorry you're all gonna laugh right because as this happens right my my entire laptop is dead i don't know what's happened to it it is completely doa so i'm on my phone right now but i am back and i profusely apologize though um either way i'm happy to continue with the q a but this is one of those things where the universe wasn't in my favor no this is one of things we come back and we reconnect and we start existing right there's always a way that was a perfect we it's it's like we planned it yeah lectures are a part of life it's fine fantastic so julian just asked a question can you see that on your screen or i should just read it out what will you consider is the hardest moment of your career and how did you overcome it so this is a very good question julian and i just wanted to say uh you know like i've had i and i say as i shared i'd lost both my parents um and i just dived into work that was my only way of escaping uh any sort of memory grief i moved cities i moved lock stock barrel and i just started making movies and seven years later 20 25 films later lots of films at festivals lots of love at the film business that i got globally which is very very humbling uh i just did not know i did not have that kind of self-love within me and even after lunch box which was a career high for me i crashed and i just dived into a lot of self-doubt there was a company that i was running uh and i was um asked to step down and i just really uh internalized a lot of um uh judgement and i was just like you know maybe i don't deserve it maybe this was all of luke maybe this was all luck that i was part of some movies that you know were selected at the cannes film festival and i was part of some movies that went to toronto and we had all those premiers and i really thought that i was just lucky you know i did not give myself enough credit and i did not give my work or my thoughts or my hustle enough credit and uh and and while hollywood reporter filmmakers uh in the world i did not believe any of it i just looked at it and i was like oh i just got lucky and uh and that is the that is the judgment that was there around me here unfortunately and i totally crashed and i had to and i figured it was overwork it was burning out it was self-doubt it was a grief unaddressed grief and that's when i had to unpack a lot of this and um it took me two couple of years it took me a couple of years to come back and even to tell myself if this is what i really want to do you know maybe i can just do something else it takes a lot from you to be able to tell a story to be able to nurture it you know you have to nurture yourself and learn to fall back in love with yourself the minute self-love happens acceptance happens we forgive ourself for our failures we figure out the judgment is not our definition it is really somebody else's insecurity projected on you uh and the minute you choose again you choose your responses better uh you're able to be back and i was able to reconstruct my career myself and be back in the business and that's when i was a part of period end of sentence but there were definitely two two and a half years where i didn't know how and it was mental health breakdowns happening and i didn't have enough resources or knowledge or even the money to hire a therapist so i went deeply spiritual i uh went back to my roots of a spiritual practice and slowly i did i was able to get a therapist i was slowly able to work through my doubts my fears and address that okay i'm dealing with so much grief i feel abandoned i feel alone i feel unheard you know and and i have just been fighting so much for so long that that pause was much needed so um yeah and that's why now when i stand here in front of you when i discuss this i've been able to internalize it overcome it and that's when i can articulate it because i felt it so deeply you know yeah and it it's so empowering to hear that because i think so much we carry so much self-doubt you know um and to break through you know those uh those hurdles is just it's it's so important to get to that place of of self-love as you mentioned um there's a question here from sonam um who says out of uh all of your award which one has been the most uh which which one has meant the most to you and why um i think all of them have been beautiful and magical uh i think the first uh you know when i born here i uh the first the first film fair that we got uh meant the meant a lot because it was more like for my parents you know how much we have the first uh indian film award that i got uh but yes the period end of sentence oscar really was an inflection point in life and uh and i remember tweeting that look ma uh you know we've put sikkim on the world map you know so it really that moment was surreal that moment was magical that moment like i i could not hear anything it was just like some beep that happened in my ear and i was like really this happens i was in the widow i was in the theater and i saw the girls go up it was magical it was just like i was a small part of this and in making this happen and seeing this and weaving this dream together i used to tell the girl saying we will go in the oscar you keep on the track you know and i was telling them why don't you write emails to everybody for sponsorship from your school because you can you know and uh they just they've they were they had also seen my interviews and you were asking me all these questions but yes i have to say that moment was magical um there were shivers all over my body and i was just like oh my god you know dreams do come true yeah so we have um another question that's come in um and this is from vail bob um i followed your oscar story how you carried a replica for years and you hustled until you won one two quick questions number one having achieved this uh having achieved this much what motivates you now and two uh what's the thumb rule for success uh weber i had that little five dollar one you know where you get best mom best sister best friend so everybody who would go to hollywood boulevard would get me like a best friend or a best producer or a best something you know just to keep me happy i have many of those and i used to always tell my uh you know in my prayer i used to always be like i have these five dollars one when will i get the real one you know so i used to just always just keep asking the universe because um i mean stories pull you like i said stories choose you and uh the key to success is to show up you know if you just show up inspired every day this is my definition of success because i had to internalize what success is because even after lunch box i did not feel successful you know and and that's the time i had to describe to myself what is my definition of success you know so for me if i wake up every morning inspired and i show up for my work and i show up to tell the story that is success for me just that much is being successful because if you're not inspired to do what you're doing and then your just day goes down you you can't get up take a shower start your day be excited about what you're doing then it's just going to spiral into one thing to another you know and that is with all the money in the world if you feel like that you're not successful you know so if you just show up and stay at course everything adds up one day at a time it adds up it has to it always does that's amazing advice um thank you so much we're gonna check in for any more uh q a um just waiting for if anybody's got any questions please this is a a a great opportunity we've got a couple of minutes left um um i i i'm gonna ask uh a question if i may um i will actually you know before before we do that there is one that that's come in uh from ananta um do you think that post therapy and having experienced a low phase in your life did you become a more grounded and sensitive filmmaker great question i think post my spiritual practice definitely more grounded more grounded in my emotions more grounded in my expectations and ass uh more grateful um and uh i think uh the me do movement uh really impacted me to be more sensitive uh to even understand that there are uh and and the stats out there that there are less than five percent women who are directors so such information out there i was just like what are we doing about this you know so i i almost feel like it's not about i anymore it's about we it's about so many of us and only then one can expand um the the stories and and our and our footprint in the world because uh one person alone cannot do anything i feel like we are here for each other and uh and filmmaking is like a tribe so yes uh uh awareness therapy awareness and more conversation and the social media impact does make make does does does an impact in empathy and and i want to be able to use my time on this earth to make some impact you know so yeah thank you thank you so listen we're going to wrap that up and i really really just want to thank you tremendously on behalf of all of the i'm remarkable team and everyone who's watching um here today thank you for participating in our second global i am remarkable week we hope that today's discussion made you think a little bit differently gave you the courage and the energy and the strength to go after your dreams like did good thank you so much i actually look forward to staying in touch i feel like i've known you for years you've made this so wonderful so special you've created such a wonderful safe space and i just want to say thank you for for your honesty your openness your candor and your bravery you're making such a huge difference in this world thank you it means the world to me thank you everybody at google and i am remarkable uh anna so num everyone and thank you roman for having me here uh and i think this is just wonderful to share each other's life stories and life lessons and that makes all of us remarkable and special so thank you for doing this and having me thank you as well i just know that um lesson learned for next year have a spare laptop ready but like you said we try we try we try and we overcome so thank you again and um let's wrap this up folks have a wonderful weekend please stay safe and we hope to catch you soon thank you [Music] you

Channel: Talks at Google

Views: 819

Rating: 4.3962264 out of 5

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Id: 19MpLNp0txM

Length: 54min 29sec (3269 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021