Nilaya Monsoon Film Festival Week Two: Konkona Sensharma, Rohan Kanawade And Anasuya Sengupta Delight Cinephiles

The second weekend of the Monsoon Film Festival began on a spirited note with a masterclass by Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, acclaimed writer-director of the 2025 Marathi-language drama Sabar Bonda, which won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema: Dramatic category at the Sundance. Curated by The Hollywood Reporter India and taking place over four weekends at Nilaya Anthology in Mumbai, the inaugural edition of the festival offers a bridge between cinema and the wider arts.

The session opened with a screening of Kanawade’s short film U for Usha, a tender tale of queerness and longing in rural Maharashtra. In a wide-ranging conversation, Kanawade unpacked his artistic process, the challenges of independent filmmaking, the need for institutional support and why his next film is a chamber drama unfolding across just two locations.

On Saturday, July 25, the noted cinematographer of definitive films like Dil Chahta Hai, Yuva, Black, Ghajini, and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Ravi K Chandran spoke about his journey, working with iconic directors like Mani Ratnam and Sanjay Leela Bhansali and debutantes like Farhan Akhtar and Nandita Das.

The conversation was crackling with anecdotes about his over three-decade career—the tantrums he has thrown and received, the films he gave up, the films he fought for, and the sea change in technology that took place in the interim.

He began the session trying to make sense about why our contemporary films look the way they do—flat, artificial, like video coverage. He spoke about the specifics of cinematography—the kind of lenses, zooms, double bounce diffusion—as well as the philosophy behind it—to give voice to the director’s vision without losing the cinematographer’s gumption.

Later that evening, actor and filmmaker Konkona Sensharma sat for a conversation about her directorial debut, A Death in The Gunj. The session opened with the actor revisiting how her parents, filmmaker and screenwriter Aparna Sen and writer and journalist Mukul Sharma, inspired her journey in cinema.

Sensharma also broke down a few key scenes from the film, explaining what informed her choices, what it was like working with the cast and what inspired her to write and tell this story. She also touched upon her growing interest in horror as a genre, why she prefers not to act in her own films and gave a glimpse of her next directorial project.

Our session on Sunday, July 26, began with a workshop by playback singer Benny Dayal, the voice behind many of Bollywood’s most loved songs from the late 2000s, like Delhi 6 and Rehna Tu, who took us through the journey of a song.

From 4 am recordings with AR Rahman to revisiting the exact moments of when he created the iconic songs Badtameez Dil and Bang Bang, Dayal delved into the importance of using an experimental approach to making music, dealing with the downsides of music not reaching the audience in the way he intended it to, dealing with a sore throat, to why today’s format of releasing music in parts rather than altogether isn’t working in today’s entertainment landscape.

He shared his take on the different between hit music and good music and offered key takeaways for aspiring singers, sharing his thoughts on playback singing, the use of AI in music and why aiming to be a good singer matters way more than aiming to become a Bollywood singer. Dayal also broke into a few lines from crowd favorites like Kaise Mujhe Tum Mil Gaye and Pappu Can’t Dance Saala, among others.

Following this, we were joined by actor and production designer Anasuya Sengupta, who made history as the first Indian to win the Best Actress award in Un Certain Regard at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. She spoke about her journey through production design and performance. She walked the audience through her incredible journey of making it to Cannes, revealing that she hadn’t even planned on staying till the end of the festival but ended up winning the award on the second last day.

The actor reflected upon playing Renuka in Konstantin Bojanov's The Shameless, the role that won her the award at Cannes, revealed how acting has given her the gift of time and spoke about how people are too afraid to reinvent themselves, as she eventually learned to do, simply because they’re told they can’t.

She wrapped up the conversation by talking about starring in Dev Patel’s next, The Peasant, calling it “absolutely mad in the best way possible.”