How Anushka Sharma backed women filmmakers in Hindi cinema
Anushka Sharma’s influence in Hindi cinema extends well beyond her work in front of the camera. Through Clean Slate Filmz, the production company she co-founded with her brother Karnesh Ssharma, she helped bring unusual stories, new voices and female-centered narratives into the mainstream entertainment conversation.
The banner became known for taking creative risks across theatrical films and streaming originals. Its projects moved between gritty crime, folklore, psychological drama and social storytelling, giving directors room to work outside the familiar formulas of commercial Bollywood.
That approach was especially significant for women filmmakers. The company’s collaboration with writer-director Anvita Dutt produced two distinctive films, Bulbbul and Qala. Together, they showed how a producer could support a female director’s visual language while still delivering accessible Hindi cinema for a wide audience.
Building a producer identity beyond stardom
When Clean Slate Filmz began, Anushka was already one of Bollywood’s most recognisable performers. Her decision to become a producer gave her a different kind of influence: she could participate in development, casting, tone, marketing and distribution before a film reached the set.
The company’s early work, including NH10, established its willingness to explore difficult material. The thriller placed a woman at the centre of a violent survival story and gave Anushka a role that was physically demanding, emotionally raw and far removed from conventional romantic leads. Although it was directed by Navdeep Singh, the film helped define the banner’s interest in stories with strong female agency.
That foundation mattered when Clean Slate Filmz began working with women creators. Supporting a female director requires more than placing a woman’s name in the credits. It means allowing her to shape the mood, the narrative rhythm and the way female experience is represented on screen.
Anvita Dutt and the gothic world of Bulbbul
Bulbbul became the clearest example of Anushka Sharma’s production ventures backing a female director. Written and directed by Anvita Dutt, the 2020 Netflix film combined period drama, folk horror and feminist storytelling. Its world of nineteenth-century Bengal was filled with red-toned interiors, supernatural imagery and carefully constructed symbolism.
The film’s central character is subjected to patriarchal control, yet the story does not treat her only as a victim. Dutt turns folklore into a language of resistance, while the production design and cinematography give the narrative the visual richness of a dark fairytale. Clean Slate Filmz’s support allowed the film to be ambitious in both its themes and presentation.
For Hindi cinema, Bulbbul also demonstrated the value of genre as a vehicle for social commentary. A woman director was able to discuss child marriage, sexual violence and power through horror rather than through a straightforward issue-based drama. That creative choice helped the film reach viewers who may not have responded to a more conventional feminist narrative.
Qala made creative risk central
The partnership continued with Qala, another Anvita Dutt film produced by Clean Slate Filmz. Released on Netflix in 2022, it followed a young singer struggling with ambition, trauma, artistic pressure and a complicated relationship with her mother. Triptii Dimri played the title character, while Swastika Mukherjee brought emotional force to the role of her parent.
Where Bulbbul used folklore and horror, Qala drew from period music culture, psychological drama and expressionist imagery. The film’s songs, costumes, sets and compositions created a dreamlike surface that gradually gave way to an unsettling portrait of guilt and emotional control. Dutt’s direction remained highly specific, and the production treated that specificity as an advantage rather than a commercial obstacle.
This is an important distinction in the discussion around women directors. Female filmmakers are often expected to tell “relatable” or socially approved stories in familiar formats. Qala had no such limitations. It was moody, stylised and deliberately uncomfortable, showing that women creators deserve the same freedom to make unconventional genre cinema as their male counterparts.
A focused slate with different creative outcomes
Clean Slate Filmz did not build its identity by hiring only female directors. Its wider catalogue included projects led by men, including NH10, Pari and Paatal Lok. That context makes the collaboration with Dutt more meaningful: the company’s model was based on backing distinctive creative voices, with female filmmakers receiving a substantial place within that slate.
| Project | Director or creative lead | Format | What it added to the slate |
|---|---|---|---|
| NH10 | Navdeep Singh | Feature film | A hard-edged survival thriller led by a woman |
| Bulbbul | Anvita Dutt | Feature film | Feminist folklore, gothic horror and period drama |
| Qala | Anvita Dutt | Feature film | Psychological storytelling shaped by music and visual design |
| Mai | Atul Mongia | Streaming series | A woman-led revenge and crime drama with an older protagonist |
| Paatal Lok | Sudip Sharma and a wider creative team | Streaming series | Social crime storytelling built around class and institutional power |
The pattern shows how production support can expand the range of female representation without reducing every project to a single message. A woman may be a survivor, an artist, a mother, a rebel or a morally complicated protagonist. Behind the camera, a director can work in horror, music drama, crime or literary adaptation.
The banner also understood that representation works through multiple layers. Female actors, women writers, costume designers, editors and creative executives all contribute to how a story feels. A female director benefits from an environment where those perspectives are treated as part of the filmmaking process rather than as a marketing feature.
Why streaming changed the opportunity
Streaming platforms gave Clean Slate Filmz additional room to support unconventional projects. Films such as Bulbbul and Qala did not have to depend entirely on a traditional theatrical opening, a mass-market release strategy or a star-driven box office weekend. Their audiences could find them through recommendations, reviews and online conversation.
That shift has been particularly useful for women-led stories and female directors. Theatrical financing often places heavy emphasis on opening-day numbers, while OTT platforms can support films with a slower discovery cycle. A visually distinctive film may build its reputation through critics, fan communities, social media clips and word of mouth.
For entertainment audiences following the wider Hindi release calendar, the contrast between streaming originals and theatrical launches is increasingly important. The October 2025 release calendar offers a useful reminder that films now compete across several viewing windows, not just at cinemas. Producers who understand this changing ecosystem can take more calculated creative risks.
What the strategy gets right
Anushka’s producing journey offers several lessons for the future of Bollywood’s female talent pipeline:
- Give women directors control over genre, tone and visual style instead of assigning them only “women’s issue” dramas.
- Treat streaming as a space for ambitious Hindi films, rather than as a backup option for projects that lack theatrical scale.
- Support female-led casts with strong writing, production design and technical departments.
- Build long-term relationships with creators, as the collaboration with Anvita Dutt demonstrated.
- Measure success through cultural impact, critical response and audience discovery as well as box office revenue.
Clean Slate Filmz’s work also shows why consistency matters. A single female-directed project can attract attention, but repeated investment gives audiences confidence that women filmmakers belong across the industry’s full creative spectrum. Dutt’s two films formed a recognisable body of work, rather than an isolated experiment.
The legacy of a creative bet
Anushka Sharma later stepped away from Clean Slate Filmz to focus on her acting career, while Karnesh Ssharma continued to lead the company. Even so, her contribution to its early identity remains clear. She helped prove that a major Bollywood actor could use production to encourage risk-taking, elevate women-led stories and create space for directors with distinctive voices.
The most lasting achievement may be the change in expectations. Bulbbul and Qala made it easier to imagine Hindi cinema shaped by women who are allowed to be bold, strange, technical, ambitious and commercially relevant. For fans tracking Bollywood films, streaming releases and emerging directors, follow Wassupbollywood for continuing coverage of the creators changing the industry.
