So, fire up your projector (or just a laptop), turn off your phone, and start with Pyaasa . As Anara Gupta says, "Let the flicker of the nitrate teach you how to feel again."

However, Gupta’s most provocative contribution is her advocacy for “feminine vintage”—the films directed by or centered on women that have been unjustly relegated to footnotes. Here, she champions Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hiker (1953), the only classic film noir directed by a woman. Gupta describes it as “a road movie of existential dread where the real monster is not the gunman, but the paralysis of male pride.” For a lighter yet equally subversive recommendation, she offers George Cukor’s The Women (1939), a film with not a single male speaking role. Gupta argues that its rapid-fire dialogue and Technicolor fashion show finale are not frivolous, but a coded language of female survival during the Great Depression. She often states, “If you want to understand the 1940s, watch the men’s war films. If you want to understand the truth, watch the women’s drawing-room comedies.”

: She gained significant popularity as the first runner-up on the dance show Nach Nachiya Doom Machiya Vintage Movie Recommendations (The "Golden Era" Classics)

: The film is a dramatic retelling of Gupta's real-life ordeal, depicting how she was allegedly framed by police. Directorial Change