Richa Chadha & Ali Fazal Turn Producers, Announce First Project Girls Will Be Girls

Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal have turned producers for a coming of age story titled, Girls Will Be Girls. The couple who collaborated for Fukrey as actors, will be launching director Shuchi Talati along with their banner Pushing Buttons Studios.

Set in an elite boarding school in a small Himalayan hill town, the story is about 16-year-old Mira, whose sexy, rebellious coming-of-age is hijacked by her mother who never got to 'come-of-age'. Mother and daughter grow up together through the course of the script and their fraught, but ultimately loving relationship is the beating heart of the film.

Praising the director, Richa called the film "relatable, often cruel but never hopeless or nihilistic". Girls Will Be Girls follows a mother-daughter duo which has been "under-explored in Indian and world cinema," said Richa.

"It's honest awkwardness will make you chuckle, not weep. It's full of relatable, lived-in episodes that one finds oddly satisfying - like popping a zit. The mother in our story routinely dodges the self-sacrificing stereotype of the typical Indian mom - she's complicated, grey, and not a martyr," she said in a statement.

Chadha and Shuchi reportedly go way back as they have previously co-directed a documentary about adults living with autism and Down's syndrome as students at Mumbai's Sophia College.

Meanwhile, Fazal said the first is special and "I am also excited that our studio will enter the market with such a progressive, female-led story. We hope to be able to tell thought-provoking and universal stories with humour and love." Girls Will Be Girls is co-produced by Sanjay Gulati of Crawling Angel Films and Claire Chassagne of French banner Dolce Vita Film.