“I hate my mother.” When Renuka Shahane heard this declaration by an acquaintance, she was inspired to write a screenplay about the bitter...

“I hate my mother.” When Renuka Shahane heard this declaration by an acquaintance, she was inspired to write a screenplay about the bittersweet, sometimes fraught bonds between women across generations. That exploration resulted in Tribhanga: Tedhi Medhi Crazy, starring Tanvi Azmi as the eminent writer Nayan, Kajol as her daughter Anu, and Mithila Palkar as her granddaughter Masha.
Anu is a tempestuous movie star and Odissi dancer whose bitterness towards Nayan is unshaken even when Nayan is hospitalised after a stroke. Anu also has a tense encounter with Nayan’s biographer (Kunaal Roy Kapur) and calms down only in the presence of her brother Robindro (Vaibhav Tatwawaadi).
Tribhanga will be out on Netflix on January 15. Shahane’s previous film Rita, based on her mother Shanta Gokhale’s novel Rita Welinkar, was released in 2009. The wait between the films has been worth it, Shahane told Scroll.in. “I guess I am happy that is coming on Netflix – had it come earlier, I would have had to make certain changes in the script for the mainstream audiences, which I wasn’t willing to do.” Excerpts from an interview.
Films made by women about mother-daughter relationships are often assumed to be autobiographical. Is that the case with ‘Tribhanga’?
My relationship is so good with my mother. Whatever I am, I would say,...