Manjari Makijany: I hope the film breaks the perception because India has such fantastic skater girls

A still from Skater Girl

For director Manjari Makijany, it was a 2017 video of children skating in a Madhya Pradesh village that sowed the seeds of her first film. "That led Vinati [sister and co-writer] and me to delve deeper into how skateboarding is impacting rural communities," begins Makijany, whose first feature film, Skater Girl, is set to drop on Netflix India this month.

Over the next two years, the director - daughter to the late Mac Mohan aka Samba - visited skateboard clubs in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hampi to develop the material. She came across the 2014 movement in Kovalam called No School, No Skateboarding that encouraged girls to attend school. The incident made her realise that her protagonist had to be a young woman. "We had to capture the sense of freedom Prerna felt on the board even as the world tries to tie her down. We met hundreds of skater girls in Rajasthan to etch out Prerna. I met a girl who was married off at 13, and was home-bound since. Her story brought me to tears. After a screening in Film Bazaar Goa, a lady in her 40s told us that some of Prerna's challenges stand true for her."

Manjari Makijany

Through the arc of the protagonist, the film challenges gender norms while depicting how the sport is giving agency to young girls. "Skating is not restricted to a gender. Neither are other sports, but we raise our girls to believe that things are demarcated based on gender. I hope the film breaks the perception because India has such fantastic skater girls," asserts Makijany, who served as assistant director to Vishal Bhardwaj on 7 Khoon Maaf (2011) and worked with Hollywood filmmaker Christopher Nolan on Dunkirk (2017). "From Vishalji, I learnt the language of cinema. As homework, I would do my shot breakdown and match it to his shots."