Guneet Monga recalls how former President Pratibha Patil once helped her

Filmmaker Guneet Monga has said that her first trip to the Oscars happened because former president Pratibha Patel helped her when her short film, Kavi, bagged an Oscar nomination in 2010. She was speaking at The Kapil Sharma Show where she made an appearance alongside Bollywood actor Raveena Tandon and author-philanthropist Sudha Murty. Guneet bagged the Oscar earlier this year for her production – The Elephant Whisperers – the documentary short directed by Kartiki Gonsalves. (Also read: Guneet Monga revisits school with Shaunak Sen: Two alumni made it to the Oscars)

Asked about the letter she wrote to the former president, Guneet said she left Delhi after her parents’ death and came to Mumbai to make films. “I had no money and I used to live in PG. I wanted a visa and funds so I used to write emails to all the influential people. I used to send emails to people like Richard Branson, Ratan Tata, Airline companies and so on. So once I wrote a mail to honorable Mrs. Pratibha Patil and I got a reply from her. The assistant called and asking what I wanted to do so I said, ‘I am the pride of India, I wanted to take it to Oscars. I would love to show you the film with my cast and crew’. I could not have asked for funds and tickets. She obliged us to hold a screening at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.”

She added, “I went there with the whole cast and crew of Kavi, Pratibhaji couldn’t see the film as she was busy with the budget. But Prithviraj Chauhan ji was there and he heard me out and helped me with the visas, tickets, stay, and everything. When we reached the US, the first thing I did was I went to an Indian restaurant in Beverly Hills and spoke to an Indian lady about my film being nominated in the Oscars, which helped us get our travel in place.”

Guneet also talked about how she learned to take no, and still go on. “At the age of 18, my father wanted me to become an insurance agent. His idea was that his friends would buy insurance from me, and that would fix a certain income for me, each time they renew their insurance. For that, I did a course where we learned that many people will say no but we have to keep going.”

Apart from Kavi, and The Elephant Whisperers, Guneet was also an executive producer on the Oscar-award-winning 2019 film Period. End of Sentence.