Lifestyle
‘Cool Ladies Club’ is directed by 10 working-class women. They live up to the title
These ten women from a working-class neighborhood in Mumbai were completely new to film-making. They got smart phones and started filming their lives. Here they pose with filmmaker Shilpi Gulati, who taught them filmmaking basics. Gulati, wearing red, stands at the far right in the second row.
Mangesh Gudekar/School of Media and Cultural Studies, TISS.
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Mangesh Gudekar/School of Media and Cultural Studies, TISS.
It’s the first scene in a new documentary. A group of women are being taught how to use phone cameras so they can make a documentary about their lives as domestic workers, community health workers, toilet operators and home caregivers. The voice of their instructor is heard talking about the things they need to think about: composing a frame, lighting, holding the camera still.
One woman raises her hand and asks: “Where is the record button?”
The room erupts in laughter.
Inexperience didn’t keep them from fulfilling their dream. These 10 working class women from Mumbai are the co-directors of the new movie Mast Mahila Mandali –- that’s Hindi for Cool Ladies Club –- which had its premiere this spring in Mumbai’s iconic, 1930s art-deco style Regal theater for an audience of 1,200 that included families and neighbors of the novice directors as well as cinephiles and media professionals.
The title came from Shilpi Gulati, the filmmaker they worked with and who taught them filmmaking basics. She suggested it at a meeting of the ten women. They deliberated over it and thought it fit the spirit of the film, pushing back against the idea that they are helpless women from the slums.
“For me, a ‘cool lady’ is someone who is bindaas — relaxed, fearless and does whatever comes to her heart,” says Rehana Shaikh, 32, a home caregiver and one of the ten selected to take part in this project.
The idea was to show what their lives are like — and also to show how cool they are by giving them a chance to express their creativity and just goof around on camera and have fun.
The idea for the film took root in 2024 and came from Supriya Jan of CORO India, a nonprofit group that teaches leadership skills to marginalized women. Her initial idea was to focus on the group’s Right to Pee campaign, which advocates for safe, clean and free public toilets. And she wanted women from the impoverished M-east ward to make the film rather than hiring an outsider.
Jan, the executive producer of the film, reached out to Shilpi Gulati, a filmmaker who teaches at the School of Media and Cultural Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, to work on the project.
At first, Gulati was puzzled by the idea. The women did not know anything about filmmaking, so how could they co-direct a film? She sprang into action: “It was a wild experiment. I put together a lesson plan so the women could learn the basics of filmmaking, from lighting to composition. We met every Saturday from about 1:30 to 6:30 p.m.,” says Gulati. With only five smartphones available, the ten women worked in pairs.
“I would give them a production exercise for the week — like shooting the Mumbai monsoon or interviewing each other about who you were in the past and who you are today?”
As the women talked and filmed, the scope of the documentary expanded. Instead of making a five-minute film about sanitation, they wanted to document the unseen lives of ordinary women like themselves, sharing intimate moments, telling their stories. It became a 70-minute documentary that took six months to film and a year-and-a-half to edit.
The driving theme, says Gulati, is that even in their busy lives, these women could take time for themselves, build friendships and show that “having fun is not frivolous. That being mast [carefree] and claiming joy is cool. It is a radical act of resistance against oppressive structures.”
Darshana Mayekar, a toilet operator and a slum sanitation program leader, says the experience made her feel young again. “For 20 years, I have been busy raising a family and working. While making the film, I was able to live a little for myself. I am 50, but I feel 20,” she says.
Vaishali Mane, 35, a community worker who helps women access property rights, says being in front of the camera gave her the confidence to speak up — for herself and other women.
Then there’s the exhilarating story of Rehana Shaikh.During the months of filming, Shaikh was between jobs so instead earned money by doing tailoring – gluing tiny round mirrors to a dazzling yellow, silver and white colored sharara set of wide-legged pants, a tunic and stole.
When it was time to take a break, Sheetal Navle, a community health worker, filmed Shaikh going up a narrow set of stairs in her two-story home to her kitchenette, where she would prepare dinner for her husband and three children.
Rehana Shaikh has her star moment as she dances in her family’s kitchenette while preparing dinner.
NPR screengrab from Cool Ladies Club via Vimeo
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NPR screengrab from Cool Ladies Club via Vimeo
In the scene filmed, as she cooks, she plays a rambunctious Bollywood number on her phone and begins to dance.
“I had always dreamed of being a dancer on screen or on stage,” she says. “Growing up, I was not allowed to step out of the house even for dance classes.
“When the opportunity to learn filmmaking came, I said yes because I wanted to learn something new. My husband said no. He didn’t want me on screen.” She says he was uncomfortable about women speaking openly on camera.
“I convinced him by saying I will only be behind the camera,” she says, deciding to hold back on the details and negotiate with him over time.
Shaikh went back and forth on keeping the dance scene in the film, given her husband’s concerns. “The other women encouraged me, saying ‘don’t hide your passion.’ It became a way to inspire others to relieve their stress and dance.”
At the premiere, her husband and three children cheered and hooted.
She was thrilled. “They were telling others in the audience, ‘She is my wife, that’s my mother!”
Note: In addition to Shaikh, Navle, Mane and Mayekar, the Mumbai women who served as co-directors are Kavita Ghuge, Rohini Kadam, Kavita Khomne, Gauri Rane, Anjum Shaikh and Nazneen Siddiqui. They were paid $262 each for their work on the film as co-directors; potential income from distribution deals and ticket sales will be shared as they own joint copyright of the film with Shilpi Gulati, who was also a co-director, and CORO India. Since the premiere, there have been additional community screenings of Cool Ladies Club, and the documentary will be submitted to film festivals this summer.
Neha Bhatt is an award-winning journalist and author based in Delhi, India, reporting on public health, development and culture. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The British Medical Journal, Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Globe and Mail, Devex and National Geographic. Connect with her on linkedin.com/in/nehabhattwrites
Here’s something American concertgoers might not know: before a musician from another country can take the stage in the U.S., someone has to file paperwork with the federal government on their behalf. And not just any paperwork — a petition, hundreds of pages long, stacked with press clippings, award documentation, testimonial letters from other artists, venue contracts, a detailed tour itinerary, and evidence that the artist is legitimately accomplished at what they do.
And that’s just to start the clock in a process that may take over a year to complete.
This is the reality for international artists — from musicians to painters, dancers to comedians — who want to come to the U.S. to share their work. It’s a complicated, expensive process that arts advocates say has long made the country a difficult place for foreign artists to access. But now, they say it’s gotten much worse.
The time it takes to process a visa has dramatically increased. The number of available interview slots at U.S. embassies is backlogged. Application costs have surged. And there’s an added layer of uncertainty: paperwork can be perfect, fees can be paid, and yet artists still can be turned away at the border.
For U.S. audiences, all of this means a quiet loss of global cultural exchange.
What does the artist visa process look like?
To illustrate the nonimmigrant visa process for artists, let’s take Kongero, a small, Swedish folk a cappella group that completed its second U.S. tour last fall.
First step: File a petition.
The group’s booking agent planned the tour and gathered all the necessary documentation to file a petition with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to demonstrate that the group qualified for a P-3 visa, the category for culturally unique artists.
Once USCIS approved the petition, each individual artist still needed to wait for a separate visa interview at a U.S. consulate in their country of residence.
Swedish Folk’appella group Kongoro, Anna Wikenius, left, Lotta Andersson, Sophia Hultqvist Kott and Emma Björling perform in Greensboro, Vt., in December 2023.
Danielle Devlin
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Danielle Devlin
According to several artists and attorneys, nonimmigrant visa processing had historically taken around two to four months, though processing time started to increase after a backlog built up during the pandemic, and then increased further after the Trump Administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Visas can be withheld and reviewed again any time the federal government announces an immigration policy change, like a travel ban update, or revisions to the petition review policy, said Zelo Safi, a senior attorney with the Artistic Freedom Initiative. There have been several similar changes during the Trump Administration.
Right now, the average time to review a P visa petition like Kongero’s is 11 1/2 months. Processing for an O-1 visa petition — for individual artists of “extraordinary ability” — has grown to a little over a year. The problem is that the government won’t even accept petitions more than a year in advance for all O visas, which are temporary work visas for those with extraordinary ability or achievement.
According to one manager of a dance troupe from Spain, the process is “completely out of sync with how the arts industry works.” Like many artists and managers NPR reached out to, this dance troupe manager requested that NPR not use their name out of fear that there would be reprisals against their future visa applications. Others declined to be interviewed for the same reason.
A statement to NPR from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that the new procedures are due to “increasing threats to public safety and national security.” It continued, “Verifying identities and personal histories from various countries requires a rigorous process — one that prioritizes the safety of the American people over everything else.”
Step two: take out your wallets
If you can’t wait a year — and most artists can’t — you pay. Specifically, you pay $2,965 per petition for premium processing, another travel fee that has increased in recent months. According to immigration attorneys, paying that fee is essentially a mandatory step for artists if they want to make their scheduled tour dates.
Kongero paid it, and they still ran into trouble. The group was granted only two months of entry instead of the year they’d applied for, forcing them to cancel their planned 2026 summer, fall and winter appearances.
Matthew Covey, executive director of Tamizdat, a legal nonprofit that helps performing artists navigate U.S. visa processing, has watched his client numbers drop since premium processing effectively became mandatory. He says that they’re choosing not to come to the U.S., because for many, the cost of total travel expenses has become too great.
“The current situation is [that] a tour that would have been marginal and maybe break-even, even five years ago, is a losing-money project now,” he said.
Step three: the interview
Once USCIS approves a petition, each individual artist still needs to wait for and complete a separate visa interview at a U.S. consulate in their country of residence. It is the Department of State that issues visas if everything checks out. With current backlogs, an interview can take months to schedule, and they cannot be missed.
Group member Emma Björling missed the first week of a two-month U.S. tour after the Trump administration instituted a new, mandatory in-person interview requirement last September.
When the new requirement was announced, she was on tour with a different musical group in Canada. Now, because of the new policy, she first needed to fly all the way back to Sweden to do the interview, before returning to North America to do the U.S. tour.
The U.S. tour ended up running $8,000 in the red. Kongero won’t return to the U.S. in 2026.
“With all the additional fees and costs and troubles and stress … it’s not worth it, not financially, and not stress-wise and workload-wise,” Björling said.
In a statement, the Department of State said, “Under President Trump, the United States is unapologetic in implementing America First visa policies. We welcome the many foreign artists who follow the required procedures and meet all of the visa requirements under U.S. law.”
But if your paperwork is approved and your interview is completed, and your fees are paid, congratulations! You have a visa!
But does that mean you get to enter the country?
Maybe not.
Step four: get past the border
Once artists have their travel arrangements set, their petition approved and their passport stamped, one final hurdle awaits once they arrive in the U.S.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have final authority at ports of entry — and arts organizations say the current climate has introduced a new level of unpredictability in how that authority gets used.
Comedian and theater-maker Alaa Shehada had come to the U.S. twice before to perform his one-man show, The Horse of Jenin, about growing up in the West Bank. He had a valid O-1B visa when he landed at John F. Kennedy Airport last November for another scheduled performance. But this time around, he says officers pulled him aside for additional questioning as soon as they saw his Palestinian Authority passport.
Alaa Shehada in The Horse of Jenin.
Dario & Misja Photography
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Dario & Misja Photography
After hours of questioning, Shehada said he was handcuffed and transferred to an immigration detention facility in New Jersey, where he described spending the night with other detainees in a cramped room on a concrete floor, shocked and confused.
He was placed on a return flight to his residence in Amsterdam the following morning — one day before his scheduled performance in Massachusetts. Neither he nor his producer received a clear explanation for why his visa was rejected. In a statement to NPR, CBP said Shehada was refused entry for “not being forthcoming with facts” during his interview with CBP officers.
“When an immigrant attempts to enter the U.S. without possessing an immigrant visa or is not forthcoming with facts during an interview, travelers may be subject to detention and refusal as statutes or visa terms may be violated,” the statement read. “A visa is a privilege, not a right, and only those who respect our laws and follow the proper procedures wil
l be welcomed.”
About a month later, the Trump administration issued an expansive travel ban that suspended visa issuance to individuals applying using any travel documents issued or endorsed by the Palestinian Authority.
“Of course, it is scary to sit with people with power who can just kill your dreams as simple as that,” Shehada said, who had planned to tour additional U.S. and Canadian cities. “You feel how unfair and humiliating that is.”
Covey says there’s heightened scrutiny at U.S. ports of entry, but less consistency with how that scrutiny is applied. In a statement, CBP said, “Admissibility determinations are made on a case-by-case basis using law enforcement, national security, and immigration information available at the time of inspection. CBP officers have the authority to question travelers, conduct inspections, and determine admissibility consistent with U.S. law.”
Jennifer Roe, executive director of Folk Alliance International, which connects artists with presenters globally, says that this means there’s no room for even the smallest of mistakes.
“I know a lot of artists are fearful of coming into the U.S.,” she said. “They’re hearing stories of being asked random questions at the border and being sent home because they didn’t answer something correctly.”
Ripple effects
When an international artist cancels their tour, the effects ripple outward.
The presenters who were stops on Shehada’s upcoming visit had already begun marketing the show and selling tickets. The New York Theatre Workshop had built an entire festival around the show. Boom Arts, a small presenter in Portland, had rented a theater for Shehada’s live performance. While several of the presenters were able to switch to showing a filmed version of the show, Shehada’s tour producer Jenny Tibbels said the losses totaled tens of thousands of dollars.
Shehada’s performance at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center had been planned for nearly a year before it was canceled at the last minute. Executive Director Jamilla Deria said the organization had been eager to share a story from a Palestinian artist with the community.
“In Western Massachusetts, where our communities are more rural, access to storytelling and the perspective of folks who are coming from parts of the world that you don’t have direct engagement with is not only lost for that night, but maybe lost for good,” she said.
Tracy Francis, a presenter with Boom Arts, said that recent travel bans and changes in immigration policy are forcing her to make difficult decisions about which international artists she can safely invite to share their art in person. She’s already shaped her next season around which countries’ artists are realistically likely to be allowed in.
“I was bringing more European artists for the first time next season, just because their visas are more likely to get approved,” she said. “I also was more careful about making sure that artists I am bringing are on a larger tour, so there’s more shared costs.”
Shehada said his experience traumatized him.
“This experience was so hard and deeply hurtful, so the idea of coming back becomes so hard,” he said. “I would love to go and meet the international audiences, the Americans. I have lots of people and friends in the U.S,, and of course, this is my mission as an artist. This is my approach to reach audiences, but with that experience, right now, I don’t feel like going back at all.”
Jennifer Vanasco edited this story for broadcast and digital. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio. Danielle Scruggs edited the visuals.
My favorite memory of the 2026 World Cup happened last month. By the late morning of June 18 in Koreatown, hours ahead of the Mexico vs. South Korea group-stage match, it was apparent that the neighborhood would be unrecognizable by kickoff.
I had heard rumblings about the Korean Festival Foundation’s watch party, but once I found out it would take place at Seoul International Park, I was almost dissuaded entirely. Although it is the beloved destination of my dog’s morning walks, its insignificant size and awkward location just off Olympic Boulevard didn’t seem appropriate for such a coveted event. So, I went to scout it out beforehand — and I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. There were already about 100 to 200 fans in the park, about six hours before the first whistle; laughing, drinking, lending a hand to vendor setups.
My apartment is only about six-odd blocks from the park, but closer to the game, I noticed a gigantic wave of red, lavender and white jerseys already crashing toward the watch party. It took my roommates and me about 30 minutes to walk the half-mile at 4 p.m., squeezing past fervent fans to eke out a spot in front of one of the two humongous screens situated on either side of Irolo Street.
Unfortunately for us, all of the good vantage points were taken. A mass in front of both screens was impenetrable; smaller televisions hooked up to generators were already seized by 10 too many eyes; even the roofs surrounding the park were full of attendees much bolder and athletic than me. We settled on the soccer field in the park, where we could juggle a ball around a bit while watching the match on our phones (and thank you to my girlfriend’s dad for his Peacock subscription).
The first half onscreen was mostly uneventful, but off-screen, I was able to witness a sort of camaraderie seen rarely in sprawling Los Angeles. People were swarming vendors from eateries all around Koreatown, dance circles formed around speakers blasting banda music, and “oohs” and “ahhs” at every missed shot were in perfect sync. Then, it happened: a goal in the 50th minute by Luis Romo of the Mexican side. The park and its surroundings exploded into a collective cheer that tickled my rib cage and resonated deep in my ear canal to the point I had to cover my ears. I can hardly remember if I joined the chorus, or if the excitement was so heavy that I just felt like an equal part of it.
Seeing my neighborhood in this light will stick with me much longer than the 1-0 result, or the fact that neither of these teams (both of which I partially rooted for) made it far into the tournament. But these memories, I believe, are what the World Cup is really about.
So tell us about your most cherished memory of the 2026 World Cup in L.A. so far. And remember, no moment is too small. We may feature it in an upcoming story.
Sam Neill arrives at the premiere of “Apples Never Fall” on March 12, 2024, in Los Angeles.
Richard Shotwell/AP Photo/Invision
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Richard Shotwell/AP Photo/Invision
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Sam Neill, a smoothly elegant and versatile actor whose career moved from art film to blockbuster as he dodged velociraptors in “Jurassic Park” to playing Holly Hunter’s husband in “The Piano,” has died. He was 78.
In 2023, Neill disclosed he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Neill died on Monday in Sydney, according to a statement posted to the actor’s social media page.
His death was “sudden and unexpected,” the statement said, adding that he “remained cancer free” when he died. A cause of death wasn’t specified.
“Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life,” his family wrote.
Actor came to world’s notice with ‘Dead Calm’ and ‘My Brilliant Career’
Neill was one of a host of actors and directors who achieved international fame after an explosion of Australian films that began in the late 1970s, a list that includes Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, Jane Campion, Peter Weir and Gillian Armstrong. His range was remarkable, playing opposite Helena Bonham Carter in the Alan Ayckbourn comedy “Sweet Revenge” to chopping off Hunter’s finger in “The Piano” to poking his own eyes out in the sci-fi horror “Event Horizon.”
In “Omen III: The Final Conflict,” he played Damien the Antichrist and he also played Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in “The Tudors.”
The actor first came to the attention of international audiences in Armstrong’s 1979 film “My Brilliant Career,” which also introduced Judy Davis. He later appeared in Phillip Noyce’s “Dead Calm,” a classy thriller set at sea and co-starring the then-relatively unknown Nicole Kidman.
Neill twice co-starred with Meryl Streep, in Australian director Fred Schepisi’s “Plenty” and — again for Schepisi — in “A Cry in the Dark,” a film about the sensationalized aftermath of a dingo killing a baby in the Australian Outback. He earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the title role of the 1998 miniseries “Merlin” and another as narrator of 2017’s “Wild New Zealand.”
‘Jurassic Park’ was his best-known film
Perhaps Neill achieved his highest level of fame in “Jurassic Park” playing paleontologist Alan Grant, who is summoned to an island off Costa Rica where a theme park has been built to house herds of cloned dinosaurs. He co-starred alongside Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough.
His character was thoughtful and reasonable, a scientist who warned the mastermind of the theme park before the chaos: “Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?”
Grant survived the harrowing events when the creatures get loose, but didn’t return for “The Lost World: Jurassic Park II” in 1997. He came back for the third episode in 2001 and “Jurassic World: Dominion” in 2022.
“It’s probably a little late to learn these things,” he told the Daily New of New York in 2001, “but I finally feel I’ve worked out how to be an action hero. I’m happier with Grant this time. He’s gnarly and grizzled, but he looks like he knows what he’s doing.”
Neill grew up in Northern Ireland, then New Zealand
Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Neill emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 7. He was born Nigel Neill, but told interviewers he started to go by Sam because there were too many Nigels at his school.
His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island and he was sent to boarding school in Christchurch. After college, he took the lead in “Sleeping Dogs” in 1977, the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade.
Neill’s other film roles included playing a Soviet submarine officer who memorably dreams of a home in Montana in “The Hunt for Red October” and an investigator in director John Carpenter’s “In the Mouth of Madness.”
On the small screen, Neill played the malign Chester Campbell in TV’s “Peaky Blinders” and Thomas Jefferson in the four-hour CBS miniseries, “Sally Hemings: an American Tragedy.” On Apple TV+, he was on “Invasion,” playing Oklahoma Sheriff John Bell Tyson, a man late in his career searching for his purpose. In 2024 he starred opposite Annette Bening in the Peacock series “Apples Never Fall.”
Actor beloved in New Zealand as an unassuming celebrity
The actor became known in New Zealand as a modest and unassuming person who didn’t embrace celebrity. On social media, he often posted images of his farm animals, many of them affectionately named after celebrities and friends, like Laura Dern the chicken, Kylie Minogue the duck and Helena Bonham Carter the cow.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon mourned Neill as “one of the greats” in a statement posted to social media.
“He started out when there was barely a film industry to speak of,” Luxon wrote. “For more than fifty years he took New Zealand stories to the world and his talents helped make our film industry into what it is today.”
Neill was also a vintner and under his Two Paddocks brand, he produced pinot noir and riesling wines from his winery in the Central Otago region of New Zealand’s South Island.
His memoir “Did I Ever Tell You This?” came out in March 2023 and he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to film,” a title approved by the late Queen Elizabeth II.
“I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments,” Neill told The Guardian in 2023, referring to his cancer diagnosis and treatment. “But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends.”
He is survived by his four children and eight grandchildren.
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