I founded Jungle Book Studio on a stubborn belief: a story doesn't need a big budget or a famous name to travel far. It just needs to be honest, told well, and put in front of the right person at the right moment. Twenty years later, I still haven't found a reason to doubt that.

What I've learned in those twenty years is that the interesting part rarely happens on set. I'm drawn to filmmakers who refuse the easier, safer version of their own story, and I've come to love the unglamorous work that follows: finding a film, its home, its audience, its actual life, long after the festival lights go down and everyone's moved on to the next premiere.

My Documentary was Faith Connections, shot in the chaos of the Kumbh Mela. I had no right to expect anyone outside India to care. It sold into more than 20 territories anyway. Then Angry Indian Goddesses, Pan Nalin's film, premiered at TIFF and reached 77 countries. I stopped being surprised after that. I understood something instead: a story doesn't need to be softened to cross a border. It needs someone willing to carry it there, personally, and refuse to let it get lost along the way.
 
That's the entire operation at Jungle Book Studio, still. Right now it's Stolen, streaming worldwide on Prime Video. It's Angh, a story from inside a culture that has almost never had the chance to speak for itself on screen and I intend to make sure this time, the world actually sees it.

I don't think of myself as someone who makes films. I think of myself as someone who bets on people before anyone else will, and then refuses to stop betting until the story wins.