Inside Mumbai’s Vanishing Arthouse Culture: Why the City Still Lacks a Home for Indie Cinema

The overly enthusiastic gentleman holding forth in the theatre lobby. Unending queues of film lovers clutching festival passes. The MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Image) Mumbai Film Festival's familiar rhythms will be absent this autumn — for the first time in its nearly three-decade history, the festival stands cancelled. This cultural Kumbh Mela for cinema lovers leaves behind more than nostalgia; its absence exposes how precious and limited arthouse film programming is in a city that produces movies for the world.  

A concurrent problem in this regard has been the absence of a dedicated film centre or repertory theatre to screen independent and arthouse films throughout the year. Unlike a Nandan in Kolkata, inaugurated in 1985 as a state-owned multiplex for art films by Satyajit Ray — who also participated in its planning — Mumbai lacks a brick-and-mortar hub for cinephilic interests. Film festivals in the city are typically hosted across a network of theatres and cultural centres. The independent films that release here take the traditional distribution route — and are often undone by the same, expending large sums of money for a sprinkling of exhibition space.  

“It’s such a pity that we don’t have alternate venues to screen non-mainstream films,” says filmmaker Kiran Rao, who presented the 2012 critical hit Ship of Theseus in select theatres, and most recently came on board as executive producer for Aranya Sahay’s Humans in the Loop. 

A Dream Deferred 

Rao, a former chairperson of the Mumbai Film Festival, and a lifelong cinephile, first watched Ship of Theseus at the Russian Centre for Culture and Science in South Mumbai’s Tardeo. It was a packed house — and the post-screening conversations in the lobby were lively and invigorating enough to get her thinking, "Why don't we have more such spaces?” 

A few years later, Rao, in collaboration with the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), announced FilmBay, a cutting-edge arthouse cinema and performance space to be built in Mumbai’s Bandra. Redesigning an existing venue that was earmarked as a children’s theatre, Rao had big plans for FilmBay: a 120-seater screening room, a library, a cafe, a workshop and an amphitheatre for live events and interactions.  

“I had an elaborate curatorial vision, a little bit like the BFI (British Film Institute) or MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) film programmes. We would screen contemporary works but also showcase shorts, documentaries, animations and works of experimental cinema,” Rao says. But after years of research and development, the project stagnated, with the NFDC backtracking on the original vision for the theatre. Rao concedes flatly that “it was a mistake” to have taken the idea to the central government body.  

“NFDC was very bureaucratic with how they went about obtaining the lease. They wanted it at virtually no cost. There was contractual back-and-forth between them and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. In that period, I also realised they wanted to turn from the independent nature of the programming to screening only NFDC films, which I couldn’t agree to.” 

Rao adds she was asked to look at “recoupment models,” turning her proposal for a community-driven ‘people’s theatre’ into a commercial enterprise. The pushback left her feeling betrayed and heartbroken. “I had worked on the project for years, and since I actually had discovered the space, I felt exceedingly let down.” She exited the project in 2015; FilmBay never took off. 

Sustainable Solutions 

There are, at present, at least three venues that give a sense of what FilmBay could have been. A 40-minute drive from upscale Bandra is Harkat Studios in Versova. Founded in 2015, it is a boutique performance and exhibition space for film, music, theatre, dance and art. Its monthly cinema programme, Harkat Cinema, began in 2016; they have screened almost every notable independent film released in recent years. In September, they held the first commercial screening for Chidananda S Naik’s Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know…, which won the La Cinef award for Best Short at Cannes in 2024. It's the closest example of a self-sustaining ‘neighbourhood cinema’, patronised by a growing community of local film lovers.  

“We want to make indie cinema sustainable because it doesn’t find a home outside of large festivals,” says Karan Talwar, founder, Harkat Studios. They subsidise their cinema initiative with earnings from their production work (Harkat is famed for designing the animated opening credits for films such as Laapataa Ladies and Kho Gaye Hum Kahan; they also make ads and sell physical art). This enables them to not charge rent for shows and split the proceeds equally with the filmmaker. It’s the only business model they perceive as sustainable in the long run without compromising on programming depth. 

“Given the real estate costs in Mumbai, it’s impossible to rent an independent theatre if that’s the only thing you do in life,” says Michaela Talwar, co-founder and creative director of Harkat. She points out that in the West, repertory and arthouse cinemas subsist on state funding; the ones that are privately owned are fast shutting down since the COVID-19 pandemic.  

“Our intention is to create a decentralised distribution system across the country,” says Talwar, who recently collaborated with the TRI Art & Culture centre in Kolkata for a two-month film programme. “We also work with the Jaipur Film Collective that shows lovely films at the Alliance Francaise in Jaipur. There’s mool: which is a multidimensional space and art collective in New Delhi. There’s a film club in Nagpur that doctoral students run, showing films at cafes.”  

Masters and Mattresses 

Versova is also the base — and unifying idiom — of VHS (Versova Homage Screening), a rather unique film initiative to have sprung up on the city’s cultural map. Every month, production designer-turned-filmmaker Rohan K Mehta and his team invite an established Indian director (from Saeed Akhtar Mirza to Amar Kaushik) to screen one of their movies. This is followed by a question-and-answer session and an afterparty. It’s a curated, closed-door event — attendees who sign up must be engaged in the film industry in some capacity (film critics, for now, make the cut). 

Mehta, who hails from Delhi and is currently working on his first feature, conceived VHS as a year-round networking forum, allowing film practitioners to interact and feed off each other. They have completed 25 screenings in the city and one each in Goa and Delhi, starting in small preview theatres before expanding to plush PVR auditoriums. 

"I did not want to start a chatai (mat) film club," says Mehta, who's been paying for the screenings out of his own pocket. "I know the amount of hard work each technical department — cinematography, art, sound design — puts into a movie. So, the projection quality and audio experience at our screenings have to be flawless." He recently landed a sponsor in craft beer brand Simba, which is footing 25 per cent of the costs besides supplying the drinks. Additionally, established directors such as Hansal Mehta, Sudhir Mishra, Abhishek Chaubey and Shoojit Sircar donate to the venture as well. 

"PVR INOX charges ₹2 lakhs for a screening and for premieres they charge ₹6.5 lakhs. Luckily, I managed to convince their leadership and worked out a deal that is quite doable," Mehta shares.  

The modern movie club subsists on a mix of arts patronage, community participation and ingenious cost management. The curators and creatives who run these spaces emphasise uniqueness and interactivity to draw crowds. For their first screening in 2024, VHS received 150 applications; the current record stands at 2,500. Footfalls have also steadily risen at Cinema House, the film front of the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture in Central Mumbai. "On a great day we are bursting at the seams," says filmmaker Nikkhil Advani, advisory board member of Cinema House. "There are times when we put mattresses on the floor to accommodate people. Even on an average day the occupancy is at around 70 per cent."  

This month, Cinema House is hosting a retrospective of legendary documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, screening 12 of his films over three days. In the past, they have held retrospectives of Mani Ratnam, Shyam Benegal and Irrfan Khan. The format has become a big draw at the venue; for the Ratnam retrospective, Advani assembled the Tamil director’s long-time cinematographers to talk about his visual mastery. 

One of the bravest experiments in the art cinema landscape in Mumbai was Matterden CFC, which was operational between 2014 and 2020. The ₹1,000-crores property was renovated from the erstwhile Deepak Talkies in Lower Parel. In its lifespan as an arthouse venue, it screened hundreds of world cinema classics as well as contemporary films. The poster of Masaan (2015) was launched there, and Iranian director Majid Majidi visited it in 2018 for a screening of Children of Men. 

Unfortunately, the pandemic brought the shutters down on Matterden. “It was a combination of factors, including changing audience habits, financial sustainability and a lack of exclusive programming opportunities,” says Pranav Ashar, whose Enlighten Film Society had the stewardship of Matterden (the theatre’s proprietor, Punit Shah, a descendant of the famous Shah family that has owned Deepak Talkies since the 1930s, remained unavailable for comment).  

Ashar also points to a ‘broader cultural shift’ that contributed to the decision of shutting shop. “The community essence of the venue was lost in part due to the media and paparazzi. After the pandemic break, we just didn’t feel motivated to come back.” 

More than streamers, he says, it’s the incessant box-office noise that has undermined film culture in India. “It’s all about dumbed-down conversations — massy versus classy, South versus North. Even the folks who were collaborating with us took a step back during that period.”  

Though Matterden CFC sold tickets in its day, often running houseful shows, Ashar is on the fence about a potential return for the theatre. It circles back to costs and limited sponsorship avenues.

“A venue like that will cost ₹1 lakh a day to operate. The scale at which we operated cannot be replicated. But if things change…” 

Mumbai’s Arthouse Map (Past and Present)

Matterden CFC, Lower Parel 

Established: 2014 (closed in 2020) 

What to watch: World cinema, French nights, indie releases.

Harkat Cinema, Versova  

Established: 2016 - present 

What to watch: Contemporary arthouse, political films, themed-programming, horror and B-movies.

Cinema House 
G54 Warehouse, Girangaon, Worli 

Established: 2021 

What to watch: Retrospectives, festival-winners, indie discoveries, classics.