When starting off as first-time producers three years ago, Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal knew what they were looking for. “An investor always invests in a story,” says Chadha. This search for powerful stories has resulted in Girls Will Be Girls, which dropped on Prime Video earlier this week. Before its India release, it won two awards, including the Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic category, at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. With it, the world knew what Chadha did already—that director Shuchi Talati has a way with stories. “Before this, she wrote a heart-warming children’s script. I was ready [to produce] that too. But that didn’t work out, this did,” smiles Chadha.

Girls Will Be Girls, starring Kani Kusruti and Preeti Panigrahi, tells the story of a 16-year-old girl’s complex relationship with her mother. It resonated with Fazal, who was raised in a house run by women. “I was raised by a single mother, and I saw how her relationship with her mother was bittersweet,” he says.