Sneha Bengani is a film and culture critic. She has written extensively on cinema, gender, books, and pop culture for some of India’s leading news publications, such as CNBC-TV18, Firstpost, CNN-News18, and Hindustan Times. Over the years, she has lived in various cities across the country but her home and heart are in Jaipur. You can find her on Instagram: @benganiwrites and Twitter: @benganiwrites.
Even with its feminist gaze, Dabba Cartel’s biggest win is how it resists baking its narrative with one-note markers of gender and social identity. The result is a batch of hungry women out to hunt—sinking their teeth in this world to devour it to their heart’s content. By Sneha Bengani
Considering the polarizing socio-political climate in the country, Sneha Bengani examines censorship and outrage in Hindi cinema, and the consequences of heightened intolerance towards this democratic, transformative medium.
Released 15 years ago, Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance (2009) was a stinging critique of the shabbiness and the showmanship of the Hindi film industry, where one of the industry’s own looked within and held out a mirror for all to see. By Sneha Bengani
Tripti Dimri has become the newest face of self-made stardom, paving her professional path with roles ranging from complex feminist heroines to objectified ‘items’ for the male gaze. With her career at a tipping point, can she avoid the industry’s pitfalls and rise to the apex? By Sneha Bengani