The queer filmmakers in India quietly rebuilding cinema

For far too long, queer characters in Indian cinema have been reduced to mere caricatures. But filmmakers from the queer community are pushing through

Seeking a parallel path

Filmmakers are no longer waiting to be absorbed into the mainstream system, and are building parallel pathways instead. They are writing material that travels across languages, working with international co-production markets, and designing films knowing they will live both in theatres and at festivals. That’s a production model shift.

Zena Sagar

One of India’s first trans women producers, Sagar recently produced TARA, a 20-minute short that follows a Dalit trans woman navigating dating in Mumbai—a powerful narrative that refuses to separate caste from queer identity.

Neeraj Churi

This producer who founded Lotus Visual Productions, which produces and promote films centred on LGBTQ+ communities, particularly from South Asia, including A Place of Our Own, which won the Audience Choice Award at SXSW 2023. They've also made Sheer Qorma and Queer Parivaar.

Asawari Jagushte

This producer-director's work, including the upcoming feature TENFA and Bodies of Desire, signals continuity—nurturing projects, building recurring collaborations, and ensuring films live beyond a single festival moment.

Malini Jeevarathnam

After assisting in films such as Madras and Aruvi, this Tamil filmmaker's work, spanning documentary and performance, centres LGBTQ+ lives within specific regional and caste realities, resisting the flattening of queer experience into urban, upper-caste narratives.

Negha Shahin

This actor, writer, and filmmaker was the first trans woman to win the debut actor award for Antharam. As a filmmaker, Shahin has directed projects which insist on agency, authorship, and structural change, pushing back against the caricatured roles and demanding space both on screen and behind it.

Jijo Jessy Kuriakose

This Kerala-based multidisciplinary queer artist's work consistently returns to questions of faith, desire and cultural resistance, most notably in projects like Velipadu (The Revelation), which explores queer awakening through spiritual and sensory experience.

Afrad V.K.

This Kerala-based independent filmmaker's debut Riptide, follows college roommates and lovers Suku and Charlie as they drift toward separation, weaving together romance, ghost story, and a bold pre-colonial digression. It replaces the thumping machismo of mainstream Malayalam cinema with tenderness and emotional vulnerability.

QueerFrames Screenwriting Lab by the Queer Muslim Project

With eight fellows selected in 2025, the Queer Muslim Project combines intensive residencies with sustained mentorship, focusing not just on craft but on industry readiness, positioning projects to move from development into production.

P. Abhijith

This filmmaker-photojournalist has steadily expanded the contours of queer and transgender storytelling within Malayalam cinema. Like the documentary I Am Revathi (2025) which traces activist, writer and actor E. Revathi's journey through systemic discrimination toward self-assertion and public voice.

The real change comes when

Queer characters become the narrators of their own stories, not people being rescued or saved by well-meaning allies. Characters are no longer reduced to some page on a script, but they’re being perceived with more agency.