Meet Smriti Mundhra, a subversive storyteller and creator of Indian Matchmaking

It’s a little hard to believe that the person responsible for Indian Matchmaking, Smriti Mundhra, 42, is also the co-director (along with Sami Khan) of the Oscar-nominated docu-short St Louis Superman (2019).

One is a darkly funny reality show in which a meme-worthy matchmaker tries to find spouses for affluent young Indians and Americans of Indian origin, highlighting hard truths about how the Indian marriage market works. The other is a sensitive and powerful portrayal of Bruce Franks Jr, 37, a battle rapper, black rights activist and state representative from Missouri whose life was shaped by the killing of his nine-year-old brother Christopher Harris, who was shot dead over 30 years ago.

This kind of dichotomy has come to define Mundhra’s work.

She directed two episodes of Season 2 of the Netflix teen comedy-drama Never Have I Ever (produced by Mindy Kaling). A few weeks before their August release, her film Shelter was nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy. The 35-minute short, part of the four-part anthology Through Our Eyes (2021), is about children navigating homelessness in America.

Her mission with both kinds of stories, Mundhra says, is to shine a light on the truth.

“The best actors are chameleons, and they can adapt and find something real in every genre and role that they play. Not that I ever want to be an actor, but that approach to creative work appeals to me,” Mundhra says. “I think, no matter what the genre or style of filmmaking, if you’re attempting to reflect our world and our experiences back to us, you will find some kernel of truth and authenticity there. That’s what I strive for.”

Every project is also, by design, deeply personal. “Some of the best advice I have received as a filmmaker was from director Shekhar Kapur, who told me to ‘look for yourself in the stories you tell’. I took that advice to heart,” Mundhra says.

Filming Shelter hit home, she says, because she is raising two children and wondering how to introduce them to the more brutal aspects of the world they inhabit. The segment she directed of Brie Larson’s upcoming coming-of-age docuseries, Growing Up, features a young Indian-American Kathak dancer, Athena Nair, who has been struggling with body image issues. “That’s something I’ve struggled with too,” Mundhra says.

Indian Matchmaking (2020) had a clear parallel with her life; Mundhra first met Taparia when she was considering enlisting as a client (she eventually found love herself, and is married to American screenwriter Christian Magalhaes).

But perhaps none of her projects was more personal for her than her first film, A Suitable Girl (2017; co-directed with Sarita Khurana). The documentary follows three young Indian women, over three years, as they find grooms and then struggle with the realisation that their marriages require them to give up chunks of their freedom.

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Mundhra says she’s always wanted to be a filmmaker. Her father was the noted independent filmmaker Jag Mundhra, known for his socially relevant films and erotic thrillers. “He was a boy from Calcutta who went to an IIT, came to America and somehow found his way to Hollywood. He had this dream, but no access, no resources and no connections,” Mundhra says.

She grew up between Los Angeles and Mumbai, as he pursued his dream.

Mundhra studied filmmaking at Columbia, graduating in 2019. Particularly amid the downturn, though, she could find no one willing to fund a film on the experiences of young Indian women. So she used up what was left of her student loan to travel to India with Khurana, to make A Suitable Girl.

“We wanted to explore our experiences as young Indian women who are under incredible pressure to get married, and really understand where that pressure comes from,” Mundhra says. “Why is this journey that touches us all still so mysterious, complex and nuanced?”

Mundhra self-distributed the film via Amazon Prime and used targeted Facebook ads to drive traffic to it. The film won Mundhra and Khurana the Best New Documentary Director award at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017.

Even while filming A Suitable Girl, the idea for Indian Matchmaking was taking shape. “From the time I met Sima, I said, ‘I don’t know if you’re going to find me a husband, (because I wasn’t in the right mental state for it at the time), but I know you’re going to be a star’,” Mundhra says, laughing. “She just had that thing, that energy, that joie de vivre. She’s charming and extremely blunt.”

Mundhra was right. Indian Matchmaking has made Taparia a quotable, controversial, pop-culture icon. A number of her regressive and problematic statements on marriage and matchmaking have been turned into subversive memes and gifs. But why give her this kind of platform? It circles back to truth-telling.

Taparia hasn’t successfully matched anyone on the show; Mundhra says the matchmaker and the show have served a great purpose in revealing where we are as a society, and in starting difficult conversations.

“Questions that have come up through the participants on the show are sparking conversations within families,” Mundhra says. “As far as I’m concerned, when we talk about things, that’s how real change and evolution happen. Sometimes that’s messy and I don’t mind the mess.”