Column | Ranjan Singh: movie ninja

Ranjan Singh, 49, is having one of those head-against-the-wall days. We catch up before the screening of Vaghachipani (Tiger’s Pond), one of several critically-acclaimed independent movies Singh has produced, and after a knotty visit to the censor board about the film Little Thomas. “There are many issues because it’s a children’s film about a kiss,” he says. Set in the mid-’90s Goa, it tells the story of a seven-year-old who tries to make his parents kiss because he believes that’s the way to get a sibling. “It’s about keeping the family together,” he adds.

Singh’s four-year-old daughter understands the value of kisses thanks to her favourite show Bluey, Australia’s most successful children’s animated show about a puppy. “She asks Vijayeta (his wife, director Vijayeta Kumar), ‘Do you smoochy kiss dada?’,” Singh says. “And here we are saying, don’t show the kiss.”

Some might describe Singh as director Anurag Kashyap’s responsible alter ego. Their relationship began, most aptly, at the box office and they have since collaborated on about 35 films. If Kashyap’s collection of DVDs is legendary, Singh has 10,000 film posters. “We think alike about movies,” Singh says. Together, they bring the country’s indie scene to the attention of the world. In a famously divided industry, they believe in the power of the collective. “He’s my backbone,” Kashyap tells me. “It’s because of him I can keep my focus on creatives. He takes care of everything and is available all the time to his filmmakers.”

They met when Singh was the head of marketing at PVR Cinemas and trying to introduce moviegoers to festival films. He advertised that PVR would screen that year’s Cannes winner L’Enfant (2005) at the company’s newly-launched multiplex in Juhu, Mumbai. “I reached the box office early to see the impact of the ad and there was one guy before me,” he says. They stayed in touch and when Kashyap co-founded Phantom Films, Singh came on board. He left months before Phantom shut shop, and later became the CEO of Kashyap’s Good Bad Films. Two years ago, Singh left the company, shortly before Kashyap, and finally went solo with Flip Films. “The joke is that I always leave first,” Singh says.

For alternative cinema

From exhibition to distribution to production, Singh’s career is a bear hug of the entertainment business. He worked at Inox and PVR when they were fledgling companies and was responsible for opening multiplexes and convincing small town Indians that the tickets were worth the premium. “The great thing about that time was that you could release even a smaller film,” he says. “Slowly, even in towns, an audience was building.”

People watched documentaries such as Leaving Home: The Life and Music of Indian Ocean (2008) and Superman of Malegaon (2012) on the big screen. Bheja Fry (2007) became one of the most profitable independent films ever. “I’m pretty sure the returns were more than 15 times the cost of the film,” Singh says. “That time was pure hope and you believed in it.”

Somewhere along the line though, things changed. Programming focused only on the dozen or so big films of the year; ticket prices rose as cinemas installed chandeliers and sold gourmet snacks; nobody invested in building the subculture of alternative films.

“Everything started coalescing around the big films, pricing was the same for a documentary and a Salman Khan movie,” Singh says. “Nobody had the business sense to build something to fall back on when the blockbusters fail. The whole purpose of four to five screens in one property is that you can play different content.” For smaller films, getting the attention of audiences in a noisy marketplace has gotten harder than ever.

For a country that makes so many films and claims to love cinema, we have a tenth of China’s nearly 100,000 cinema screens. “My guess is that the serviceable number of screens might be in the range of 6,500-7,000. Of these, the southern states have about 4,400 screens. So the rest of the country has less than 3,000 screens,” Singh says. South India sees higher footfalls than the rest of the country for other reasons too. “Your ticket is subsidised and there is a cap on the number of shows,” he says.

A childhood escape

Singh’s love for films was born in Army cantonments. His father was a junior commissioned officer in the Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME). “I don’t think there was any other access to art for me, except movies which we watched in the mess and in the ordnance theatre,” he says. Life changed when he was 10 and his father retired in Vadodara. I remember going to the railway station to get copies of Filmfare magazine from the A.H. Wheeler shop,” he says. “I still have all the issues from 1989 to 2007.”

Though he immersed himself in that world — escaping to dark theatres was a balm for a difficult childhood — a career in movies didn’t seem like a feasible option. He joined advertising and was pitching to a client from Inox when the man offered him a job.

As for Little Thomas, the Central Board of Film Certification wants to give it a UA 13+ certificate, ensuring that many children won’t be able to watch it. One possible solution? Amp up the speed of the kiss.

The writer is a Bengaluru-based journalist and the co-founder of India Love Project on Instagram.

Published – January 08, 2026 04:19 pm IST