During one of my lunch breaks in college, I was relentlessly pestering my friend about something trivial and silly when, in a fit of annoyance, he snarked, “Can you not, stupid wench?” Now it was all in jest and we’re still friends. And while it did fit the definition of the word as I understood it then, a word loaded with sexist and racist connotations in popular culture, if you trace it back to its roots, it simply means a girl or a woman.
The word appears fluidly in William Shakespeare’s works, from Prospero affectionately calling his daughter Miranda a wench in 'The Tempest' to its use in 'Othello', where Iago, the villain, refers to his wife Emilia as a wench, and not in an I-love-my-wife kind of way. The word was dynamic and could swing either way. But unfortunately, as happens with most words that deal with women and women’s matters, only the negative connotations survived.
To break these absolutely untrue and false definitions of the word and remind us of what it originally meant, the Wench Film Festival is back for its sixth edition from 26th February to 1st March at Alliance Française de Bombay in Mumbai. India’s first and only horror, science-fiction, and fantasy film festival, Wench will be screening 54 films by artists from across the world, 33 of which are directed by women, continuing its compelling commitment to bringing female and non-binary voices and perspectives to the forefront.
In a conversation with Homegrown, Sapna Moti Bhavnani, the founder of the festival, spoke about what has been missing in the Indian film space when it comes to genre cinema and what Wench aims to spotlight.
“It’s not like we didn’t have it (independent genre films in Indian cinema), but if you look at universities, film schools, film labs, or even the festivals we’ve had, nobody really celebrates genre in general today," says Sapna. "So how can we expect to have good genre cinema out of India when it’s not even taught? It’s not even spoken about?”
She returns to the global stage, pointing out that one of the biggest films of last year, 'Sinners', was a vampire musical, perhaps the most Indian-sounding theme there could be as Bhavnani points out. She emphasises that what is missing in India is not the audience or the artists, but the avenues and resources needed to create genre films of the highest calibre. When the festival began, there were virtually no Indian genre films to program. Today, with 20 Indian films screening in the 2026 edition, the shift is undeniable; a change Bhavnani attributes to simply creating a space where filmmakers know their work will be seen.
This year’s visual and conceptual theme is the hospital. The festival opens with the Indian premiere of Ritesh Gupta’s ‘The Red Mask’ and closes with New York based filmmakers Adams Family’s ‘Mother of Flies’ which was also the winner at the Fantasia Film Festival. Bhavnani’s own short film, ‘Landfills of Desire’ will have its Asia premiere at the Wench Film Festival. Based around the Kashmiri folkloric figure ‘Rantas’, the film was shot on Dal Lake. While speaking behind the making of the film, she said “ The whole point of the film is that we have our own ghosts. Unlike the Wicked Witch of the West or Dracula, we have our own, and my goal with Wench, and with my own personal storytelling is for the world to know about the witches that come out of India.” By foregrounding indigenous horror and bringing out our stories, Bhavnani asserts that India has never lacked stories or imagination, just platforms to showcase them.
By reclaiming a word that history tried to reduce, Wench reclaims space. By centering horror, science fiction, and fantasy — genres long sidelined within Indian cinema — the festival insists that imagination is not frivolous, and that fear, folklore, and the fantastical are as culturally significant as realism. And by giving our stories and ghosts that come along with it, finally a stage Wench moves the needle toward what films and our collective imagination can look like.
You can book your tickets for the Wench Film Festival here and follow them on Instagram here for any updates.
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