Vikramaditya Motwane's mother Dipa De Motwane passes away.
Dipa De Motwane breathed her last on Saturday. Mother of renowned filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane, she was also a seasoned producer in her own right. Having started her career as an associate producer on Somnath Sen’s Leela (2002), she also worked on the sets of Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2002 horror comedy Makdee and Ashvin Kumar’s 2009 adventure film The Forest.
Dipa De Motwane then turned producer with her son Vikramaditya Motwane’s 2010 directorial debut and seminal coming-of-age film Udaan. She became a producer at Phantom Films, then co-owned by Motwane, Anurag Kashyap, Vikas Bahl, and Madhu Mantena. In that capacity, she worked on films like Lootera (2013), Hasee Toh Phasee (2014), NH10 (2015), Masaan (2015), Trapped (2016), and Bhavesh Joshi Superhero (2017), among others.
She also became a producer with her son at Andolan Films, which was named after the only film her father-in-law produced — Andolan (1951). Under that banner, they produced his 2020 Netflix India thriller AK vs AK and his 2023 Amazon Prime Video period drama Jubilee. Aditi Rao Hydari, who played the female lead in the show, shared pictures of herself and her husband Siddharth with Dipa along with an emotional note on Instagram.
“Farewell OG… (red heart emoji). Champion producer, Tiger mom to not just her own. Life of a set, life of a party. Feeder, scolder, nurturer with the largest heart, the warmest hugs and the time to listen. Inspiration 101. My darling Dipa Aunty, I will miss you so so much (red heart emoji),” wrote Aditi.
In a 2023 chat on the YouTube channel of Maitri by Amazon Prime Video, Dipa De Motwane opened up on her struggles of making it in the film industry. “I was an outsider coming into this industry. Yes, I did have to self-censor because I was a single mother. I smoked. I drank. I was the proverbial stereotype. So, I had to be careful which job offers I took up. And I was desperate for work! But I had to say no to a lot of work because I felt it was not a safe environment for me,” said Dipa.
That made her much more sensitive to women’s needs once she turned a producer. “When I came in, I realized there were so many things that were lacking as far as women were concerned, whether it’s toilets, safety and prevention against sexual harassment,” said Dipa, adding, “Even the costume people, who have to go to a godown at night, it should be somewhere convenient, accessible, and safe.”
She recalled working on a call sheet to streamline the processes at a producer’s office when she bumped into filmmaker Shekhar Kapur. “And he actually laughed and said, ‘You really think that’s going to work?’ I said, ‘But somebody has got to have to start making these processes. I think we brought in a lot of systems which brought some order out of chaos,” said Dipa.