This Netflix film on skateboarding in rural India is the weekend inspiration you need

It was in 2015 that the story of a German national, Ulrike Reinhard, transforming young lives in the remote village of Janwar in Madhya Pradesh first started gaining mainstream attention. Janwaar Castle, a 4,843sqft skatepark that Reinhard helped build, was not just an outlet of creativity for the children, it became a playground to challenge existing caste and gender biases.

Los Angeles-based filmmaker Manjari Makijany came across this uplifting news piece in 2017, which convinced her to deep dive into the burgeoning sport in India. “Janwar was the first of many skate communities that I interacted with during our research phase. It was a brief visit over two days but we were very impressed with how the kids were skating there and the impact it had locally,” recalls Makijany. The idea was disruptive but stories like Reinhard’s were all around—in Afghanistan, there was Oliver Percovich who started Skateistan, an NGO that pioneered the pursuit of skateboarding as a catalyst for change in a war-ravaged state. Closer home, there was the SISP Kovalam Skateclub in Kerala, which was set up in 2013 for Kovalam’s fishing community to offer free skateboarding lessons to motivate drop-outs to get back to school. With such a rich repository of material exploring skateboarding’s social impact, Makijany didn’t have to look too far to find the subject for her debut film, Skater Girl.

“While researching, we realised this movement was a lot bigger than we first imagined. My sister (Vinati Makijany, co-writer-producer of the Skater Girl) and I were fascinated by discovering skateboarders thriving in Madhya Pradesh, Kovalam, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore,” says Makijany, who has previously assisted cinema legends such as Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk, The Dark Knight), Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman) and Vishal Bhardwaj (7 Khoon Maaf).

Art for change

Authentic and relatable, in less than two hours, Skater Girl captures the story of a 15-year-old village girl chasing her new-found dream of becoming a skateboarding pro against all odds. It touches upon existing societal biases and age-old cultural and religious beliefs that differentiate a menstruating woman from another, but never gets preachy or lacklustre as most films around social issues end up being. “Skater Girl breaks many stereotypes without being heavy handed. There are a lot of dualities in the film—gender, class, East vs West—but it was important to portray these contrasts in a non judgmental and subtle manner… All these things were important to incorporate to show all the things a girl is up against,” explains Makijany.

The opening shot of a young girl exhilaratingly running, as if in open defiance of everyday norms, is cut short, almost like a reality check. Soon the film establishes how females are missing from public life in this village. And over the course of 1.49 hours, the film hammers the point subtly through vignettes of everyday life. But Skater Girl’s real appeal lies in the small ways these biases are thwarted to actualise and empower the lead in her journey to self-discovery. “I feel like I belong... there's no one to control me, no rules to follow,” says the female lead, when asked about her obsession with the sport. 

Makijany knew from the beginning that her debut full-length feature had to be more than just an entertaining, feel-good film about social change. It had to be the change. Today, even before Skater Girl hits OTT platforms, the social impact of her film is visible in the Khempur-Mavli district, where lies Rajasthan’s first skatepark that the filmmaker insisted on constructing, rather than shooting at an existing location. “Personally, it’s a unique experience to work with a construction team to build a permanent structure of this scale for a movie,” says the 34-year-old filmmaker.

How a counterculture sport from the West ends up finding a deep resonance in rural India and becomes a tool for women’s empowerment is the crux of the film. Skater Girl is definitely a coming-of-age story set in Rajasthan but the way it intertwines the trajectories of three women—a peanut-selling teen Prerna (Rachel Saanchita Gupta), a Brit-Indian advertising executive Jessica (Amrit Maghera) and a benevolent queen (Waheeda Rehman)—makes it a refreshing perspective that can only be actualised by a female filmmaker. “So it’s a story about Prerna overcoming obstacles but also a story about different generations of women who can relate to each other’s struggles. They are each from a different strata of society, but there’s so much they connect on, which is also a beautiful thread in the film,” adds the filmmaker, who has previously made award-winning short films like The Last Marble (2012) and The Corner Table (2014).

Inside view

Some critics could argue that Jessica’s efforts to “save” the disadvantaged children in rural India can be seen as a white saviour complex, but in Makijany’s hand, it remains a heartfelt story that mirrors the real-life events, without ever being cringe-worthy. Through her lens, rural India is not exoticised or romanticised a la Slumdog Millionaire, it’s an honest portrayal that avoids telling the Indian tale from the Western eye. “I always wanted my first feature film to be set back home in India. And for me, it was important to tell an authentic story and not sensationalise the subject with an ‘outside’ gaze,” shares Makijany, who is the daughter of Bollywood’s favourite villain from the '80s, Mac Mohan.

Born to a cinema family from Mumbai and working in Los Angeles, Makijany says she was aware of her privilege as a city bred, especially while shooting in rural India. “It’s incredible how sometimes we can feel like an outsider in parts of our own country. If you travel a few kilometres within the same state, the norms, dialect, and subcultures become different,” she explains, “Jessica’s character is of Indian heritage and is modelled after the struggles we faced building Rajasthan’s first skatepark, which was no easy feat. We were constantly asked, “Why are you doing this?” “Why in this village?” One day a young girl asked if I was a foreigner. We’re both Indians but because I’m a city girl, to her I was an outsider. So the concept of an outsider and insider runs deeper than we think, it depends on the prism of the person perceiving you.”

True to life

Many onset occurrences as well as lessons and observations from India’s skateboarding communities also made their way to Skater Girl. In Khempur, Makijany was surprised to see children playing with skateboard-like toys made of wood and scrap—a detail that she incorporated into the film as well. Shot mostly in Khempur, Mavli and in and around Udaipur, Skater Girl’s climax is the final skateboarding championship. Not only does it culminate in the skatepark built during the making of the film, Makijany, true to the sport, invited real skaters from across India to play themselves for the scene. The effect is an adrenaline-pumping ride that makes you cheer and cry at the same time.

A four-year-long passion project, the film isn’t just Makijany’s debut, it also marks the debut of many other first-timers, including the adolescent lead and her brother Ankush (played by Shafin Patel). “Rachel went through a rigorous audition process and bagged the role after being part of an intense workshop process,” shares Makijany, whose sister conducted workshops with over 3,500 children before settling on the lead. “This was an unusual casting process where we had to cast actors who could potentially skate or skaters who could act. We ended up finding the perfect non-actors to cast but none of them could skate,” adds the filmmaker about the challenges of her niche feature. Unbelievable as it sounds, it was with the help of coach Kevin Anish Christopher that the cast was trained in skateboarding for five months to perform on screen.

Free wheeling

Powered with the thrill of watching wheeled child actors perform kickflips and ollies on asphalt and charged with the heart-tinged struggle of a girl looking for self-fulfilment through skating, the film celebrates the spirit of skating that looks beyond societal mores.

In 2018, when she was scouting for the perfect village to bring on screen, Makijany’s decision to shoot in Rajasthan was three-pronged. Her prerequisites were: “It should be a rustic village that we could use as a backdrop, but also have some concrete roads where kids could skate. Additionally, it should have enough kids in and around the village so the skatepark would be beneficial to the local community.” She adds, “We had the added responsibility of building a skatepark in a place where it would have the scope to create change long after the film was shot.”

The Desert Dolphin Skatepark in Khempur, 14,500sqft of undulating space made of concrete, was built in 45 days for the film by skatepark design company 100 Ramps, and skate collective Holystoked. Today, it stands as a space to empower the community through the art of skateboarding. “It was the best decision we made,” says Makijany about setting up a community skatepark for the local children. “This skatepark represents hope, inspiration, and changing dreams. There’s a kid who was written off in the village as being ‘slow’, but he took to skateboarding and now he's one of the most expressive, creative kids, who represented Rajasthan in the National Championships,” she shares proudly.

With skateboarding officially entering the Olympics in 2021, Makijany hopes the skatepark will foster many future talents from this little known village. “Skateboarding truly is an amazing catalyst to disrupt and bring about change. We hope our little initiative of social change impacts the local community and continues to thrive long beyond the film,” she says. As for those watching the film this weekend, she hopes they “aren’t just inspired by Prerna's journey, but find a connection to their own self and inspiration to follow their dreams. In these times when everything can seem so grim, I want this film to be a breath of fresh air and carry hope."

Manjari Makijany's debut film, Skater Girl releases on Netflix on June 11, 2021

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