PUSHING BUTTONS STUDIOS

A Studio by Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal

Productions

Girls Will Be Girls

Girls Will Be Girls (2024) is a poignant coming-of-age drama directed by Shuchi Talati and marks the maiden venture of Pushing Buttons Studios. The film sensitively explores a teenage girl's awakening and the emotional echoes it stirs in her mother. Since its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, it has won two major Sundance awards—Audience Award for World Cinema Dramatic and Special Jury Award for Acting (Preeti Panigrahi)—and swept four top honors at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, including the NETPAC Award, Young Critics Choice, Film Critics Guild Gender Sensitivity Award, and Jury Special Mention. Its remarkable journey culminated in a historic win at the 2025 Independent Spirit Awards, where it became the first Indian film to receive the prestigious John Cassavetes Award.

Secret of a Mountain Serpent

In a Himalayan town during the Kargil War, a lonely schoolteacher’s yearning intensifies when a mysterious writer arrives—awakening suppressed desires among the women left behind. As folklore and reality blur through the myth of a waiting serpent, their longing transforms into a quiet collective defiance, where love and desire are revealed not as scandal, but as a deeply human search for presence and freedom.

Upcoming (Fiction)

Papita

Porus Bisht is a photographer with a natural instinct for voyeurism. He works as a paparazzi photographer in Mumbai, but has much greater ambitions - to be a revered professional photographer. The course of his career and life is completely changed when he witnesses and photographs an incident involving a popular celebrity.
Genre: Crime/Thriller
Format: Feature Film

Mujhse Bura Na Koi

When Reeni’s estranged mother returns to their native home to force a reconciliation at knife point, Reeni and her overly supportive boyfriend, Badal are pulled into a chaotic homecoming, complete with emotional blackmail, a nightmarish hostage situation, messy family politics and the possible collapse of their own relationship.

Pinky Promise

In a small hillock-town of Himachal Pradesh, Pinky, a ‘spirited’ dancer, and Goldie, a talented singer from a rival devotional singing group, find themselves entangled in a forbidden love. Despite their feuding families, they defy expectations and embark on a joyous musical journey, creating a modern-day Romeo and Juliet tale with a heartwarming and happily-ever-after twist.

Lucky Jools

When her best friends die in a car crash, Jools travels to their home in India to find she has been made guardian of their daughter Lucky. As they embark on a road trip across the heart of the country, their burgeoning relationship soon starts to blossom, but will it be strong enough to survive the revelation that Jools donated the egg that resulted in Lucky’s birth?

S Line

One day you have, a pair of glasses in your hand With the glasses you see the red lines between human SEX LINE Just like the forbidden apple upon on Adam and Eve, S Line is a drama on all the desires of humans, speculating what IF the unseen privacy is revealed and and what COULD happen when we can face it.

ANTARIKSH

A depressed space technician, his drug-dealer friend, and a mysterious alien woman accidentally catapult into a cosmic odyssey where psychedelics, feelings, and AI collide—forcing them to confront love, death, and the meaning of happiness across galaxies.

Phalke

A young researcher stumbles upon a lost manuscript that pulls him into the mythical and forgotten world of Dadasaheb Phalke, uncovering the untold story of his first wife Kamala and the origins of Indian cinema.

DOGGIE STYLEZ

Doggie Stylez is a dystopian comedy about a lovestruck pug who dares to kidnap the president’s wife, and is jailed for his sins. Burning with shame, the pug escapes to form a country where dogs would be gods – all so that she’d come back begging to him. And pet him.

Miss Palmolive All-Night Cabaret

Palmolive is a graphic novel that combines elements of contemporary Indian pop culture with small-town folk legends and oral history. The story is inspired by the imaginative reporting found in small-town newspapers and pays homage to the stereotypes and negative characters often found in cinema history. The goal is to create a thrilling, entertaining experience that can stand alongside mainstream Indian cinema.

Gulnaz

When aspiring fashion designer Gulnaz Taqi returns to Lucknow to care for her mother, she is presented with the opportunity to reconnect with her roots and revive her family boutique.

Aakhri Somwar (The Last Monday)

35 year old Pooja Sharma is crumbling under the dual pressure of zero job satisfaction and being a spinster with diminishing prospects in Indian society. As a reality TV producer, her job is a far cry from her dream of being a photojournalist. She also finds that most men are wary of marrying a woman who makes more money than them. Out of desperation, she commits to a drastic and difficult religious dry fast to find a husband - undertaken on Mondays alone - a practice that is incompatible with her urban and feminist idea of self. But then strange things begin to happen on Mondays.

Betul

The dusty, otherwise quiet town of Betul in the heart of India comes alive every autumn in preparation for the annual 'witchcraft fair.' People from nearby villages and faraway towns gather to seek divine intervention for their problems, giving impetus to the 'superstition economy.' The local government announces that 50 couples from poorer families will be married in a large community wedding paid for by the government, but things turn sour when two prospective grooms are found murdered on the eve of the event. Far from dispelling crowds, this scandal instead increases the footfall of the fair, with villagers suspecting the murders to be the handiwork of an evil witch. An honest female cop, Punita Passi, hailing from a marginalized caste is called in to investigate the gruesome killings and she solicits the support of the meek, veiled village women to solve the case. But are the women actually submissive, or do they harbour an evil spirit in their midst? Playing into the occidental prejudice of the Western gaze with the colourful world of snake charmers and exorcists, Betul is a sharp, satirical comment on gender in Indian society, which is hyper-local enough to be universal.

Kinara (The Shore)

Madan (52) lives alone in a bustling, anonymous city trying to write his new book. When he sees a random YouTube video of a man jumping into the sea from a huge ship, Madan leaves for a cruise trip on a whim. He flits between writing and watching the decadence on the cruise, then meets Kriti (41) and a strange relationship forms — perhaps it's love, or maybe more. Both jump off the ship one night when they see an empty boat; they row off into the sea, talking, laughing, bonding with each other, eventually reaching an island inhabited by a solitary 11 year old boy. They spend time with the boy eating, laughing, making sand castles, and giving him growing up advice. After a period of conflict with each other, Madan and Kriti decide to walk away into the water even as Sonu watches. Left alone again, Sonu deals with the loss, then over days he makes a boat for himself and slowly rows away from the island.

Upcoming (Non-fiction)

Ghumakkadi

Ghumakkadi (Wanderer) is an epic journey led not by guidebooks, but by your own senses. It invites you to wander with wonder, to see the unseen in what you thought you knew. Travel not just by sights, but through smell, sound, taste, touch, and a special sixth sense that you will experience at the end of the journey! Here, the old becomes new, and the ordinary becomes mind-blowing! Ghumakkadi takes you to a place, and teaches you how to feel it.

Jigyaasa with Jaadu — The Story of Human Curiosity

A 50-episode science odyssey where logic dances, poetry thinks, and curiosity sings, led by the legendary Javed Akhtar. Blending stylized storytelling, dramatized experiments, and timeless charm, the show reawakens India's scientific spirit, not through lectures but through drama, humor, emotion, and wonder. Rooted in Indian ethos, made for a global audience, it brings science to living rooms, chai tapris, and young minds everywhere. Science, like you've never felt it before, like magic.

ABOUT

Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal

Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal are acclaimed Indian actors and producers with a strong footprint in both Indian and international cinema. In 2021, they co-founded Pushing Buttons Studios to champion bold and original Indian stories. Their debut production, Girls Will Be Girls, premiered at Sundance 2024, winning the Audience Award and the Special Jury Prize, and has been acquired for global release. With a growing slate of films and series, the duo combines artistic vision with business acumen, working across genres, managing lean budgets, and exploring co-production and hybrid release models. Backed by festival success, international financing experience, and commercial sensibility, Richa and Ali are building a new narrative and financial blueprint for Indian cinema on a global stage.

CONTACT

contact@pushingbuttonstudios.com