Here’s some fantastic news for all indie cinema lovers! Mumbai-based Drishyam Films is all set to launch a $20m production fund to facilitate the growth of independent Indian cinema and to escalate it to a global reach. Exciting news, isn’t it? Here’s more. The fund will be spent in developing and producing cutting edge original content that will be true to the Drishyam vision of cinema, that is, local in its setting but global in its appeal. And it will be put to use for producing 10 independent Indian films over the next two years.

Manish Mundra, the founder of Drishyam Films, will announce the first projects under the fund in early 2018 and the fund will also be used to develop Drishyam Films’ VFX Studio in Mumbai.

The production fund, which is raised independently by Manish Mundra, will help Drishyam Films towards accomplishing their goals of building a platform for unique voices of Indian independent cinema and to create global content with rich Indian flavours. 

Talking about this exciting new development, Manish Mundra recently stated: “The last three years at Drishyam have been phenomenal in the terms of where we started and how far we’ve come. This fund has been set up with the objective of taking Indian cinema to the next level internationally. We plan to take our focus on content driven cinema and merge it with high technical finesse to make films that will travel across the world.”

The studio, which has produced some of the most acclaimed and globally feted Indian films recently such as Ankhon Dekhi, Masaan, Dhanak, Umrika and Waiting, also released a special showreel that celebrates their impressive body of work, and gives audiences a sneak preview of their forthcoming releases.

Take a look

Apart from the fund, Manish Mundra has two new features going into production over the summer – Mohamed Gani’s Cycle about the importance of the humble bicycle in small-town India, and Ganesh Shetty’s Anonymous which is about a woman and her relationship with society as she undergoes an abortion. Both films are being readied for festival submission by the end of the year.

Drishyam Films has already had a great start to 2017, with their next release, Newton, starring Rajkummar Rao which won the CICAE Award at the Berlin International Film Festival 2017 and the Jury Prize for Best Film at the 41st Hong Kong Film Festival, 2017. 

More recently, their films won big at the 64th National Film Awards where Dhanak won Best Children’s Film, while Kadvi Hawa bagged a Special Mention.