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This article is an in-depth interview that traces the inconic legacy of British-Indian filmmaker Gurinder Chadha, most well known for her early 2000s smash-hit 'Bend It Like Beckham' in which a young British-Indian girl whose love for football collides with her family’s expectations of tradition. Hot off the heels of her latest release, 'Christmas Karma', we caught up with Gurinder to learn more about her Desi take on a Dickens classic.
Say what you will about sports — its full of politics and drama at the best of times — but in its purest form, it remains one of the most unifying forces we have. There’s something extraordinary about people from everywhere coming together, rising above themselves, and becoming part of something larger. It reminds us that we all hold a bit of greatness within us. Everyone should get to feel that. For me, it happened when I was twelve years old, watching Gurinder Chadha’s 'Bend It Like Beckham'. It's when I saw myself in Jess and in her struggles with identity.
Bend It Like Beckham (2002), starring Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Anupam Kher, follows Jess Bhamra, a young British-Indian girl whose love for football collides with her family’s expectations of tradition, and the “right” path for a daughter. As she secretly joins a local girl’s team and discovers both her talent and her independence, the film becomes a gentle but sharp study of negotiating cultural boundaries.
More broadly, the film explores what rebellion looks like in desi, especially immigrant, households. There’s a moment near the end where Jess tells Joe she can’t be with him because her parents have already stretched their limits — they’ve accepted her passion for football and even allowed her to go to the US for a camp, but she feels she can’t push them any further. It captures a very desi idea: rebellion happens in 'acceptable increments', and there’s only so much we’re allowed to challenge at once.
In a conversation with Homegrown, Chaddha reflected on how this sensibility comes from her own life. She joked, “Interestingly, it was only about five years ago that I did my first sex scene in a movie. All my Indian reservations came up and I was like, "Oh my God, what would my mum say?”
The constant negotiations we make — not just as young desi people but also as women — shine through in her films, and this especially clear in 'Bend It Like Beckham. She has spoken about drawing heavily from her relationship with her own mother while shaping Jess’ tumultuous yet endearingly hilarious dynamic with hers. The constant bickering, the inability to fully understand each other’s worlds, and the inescapable ways we end up mirroring our mothers all come through so distinctly in the film.
Chadha situates these personal dynamics within a larger creative context, explaining: “I feel that I've been at the forefront of creating a whole new film genre, which is the cultural paradigm of being part of a diaspora. That idea of your parents being born somewhere, coming somewhere else, or your grandparents — the idea of migration, movement, struggle — it’s all a kind of inherited memory for us.”
This sentiment also echoes in her upcoming film Christmas Karma, a desi-spin on Charles Dickens’ classic novel ‘A Christmas Carol’.
While discussing the idea behind recreating Dickens’ much loved adaptation of the novel, Chadha said, “What I wanted to do was kind of make it (the adaptation) personal to me, and it really is a story about the disparity of wealth and greed in Victorian society, but also the value of a human being. And at a time when in the news, there's so much talk of refugees and migrants, and some of the harsh way that people talk about them, I found it quite upsetting. And so that was my starting point was to look at how to make people feel more human.”
The character of Scrooge in the film who is described by Chadha as “ an Indian Tory who hates refugees” grew out of someone she knew as a child — a man whose life had been upended by history. Born and raised in Uganda, he was forced to flee in 1972 when Idi Amin expelled all Asians within 90 days. Arriving in Britain as a young refugee, he faced hostility, grief, and the sudden death of his father. Chadha recalls him spending Christmas with her family, confused by their traditions and convinced they were “trying to be white,” unable to understand that these rituals were simply theirs. His displacement, his guardedness, and the quiet trauma he carried stayed with her. She folded that memory into her Scrooge — a way of humanising the refugee experience, of showing how people lose everything through no fault of their own, and how that loss lingers long after.
Set in present-day Britain, Christmas Karma follows an affluent, conservative British—Indian businessman, played by Kunal Nayyar, who harbours deep resentment toward refugees and migrants. On Christmas Eve, he is confronted by three spirits who take him through his past, present, and possible future, forcing him to reckon with buried trauma, inherited displacement, and the harm he inflicts on others.
The film itself wasn’t easy to get off the ground until Gurinder Chadha unexpectedly met Anushka Shah, CEO of Civic Studios, on the Cannes red carpet. What began as a simple fan moment quickly turned into a creative partnership, with Anushka coming on board as a producer. Explaining why she chose Christmas Karma, Anushka said, “Our goal is to support women filmmakers and strengthen representation through better storytelling. Gurinder has an incredible track record of doing exactly that — her politics shines through in everything she makes, but with such entertainment and fun and joy. So the idea of taking a so-called British or European classic, one with a deeply global message, and reframing it through the lens of a South Asian filmmaker whose family history spans India, East Africa, and the UK felt both meaningful and necessary.”
In ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ Chadha’s portrayal of Jess and Jules’ friendship challenged stereotypes about female rivalry. It displayed how female friendships, especially at that age, often become your first line of defence against family pressures, school dynamics, and early romantic experiences, making them some of the most intimate relationships you can have. And this can be seen in the making of Christmas Karma as well, with the sheer number of women who have come together to bring the film to life. It isn’t just the producers behind the scenes — the creative ecosystem around the film is powered by women at the top of their craft. Priyanka Chopra lent her voice for a soulful rendition of George Michael’s 'Last Christmas', and Anoushka Shankar added her unmistakable musical depth to the same track that is played in the credits sequence of the film.
In an industry that is still overwhelmingly male-dominated, where women often have to work twice as hard for half the recognition, this level of solidarity carries real weight. It isn’t symbolic, but structural. It shows what becomes possible when women not only occupy space but actively hold the door open for one another. As Chadha puts it, “How gratifying is it that all these women, who are giants in their own fields, took the time to come and do this to support me?”
Many films from the early 2000s — and particularly Gurinder Chadha’s work — have a very distinct tonal signature. Her stories tackle bigotry, identity, and social tension with a lightness that never trivialises. But as the industry and its audiences have evolved, the landscape has shifted. The world is becoming increasingly polarised, and viewers, too, are approaching cinema with a more serious, sometimes harsher lens. While speaking about her role and evolution as a filmmaker, Chadha says, “I come from a society that wants to always put people that look like me into pigeonholes, and be seen as the problem. And it's always our problem. There has been a rise of the right and the rise of racism and the problem is, it is because people are ignorant of their history. People don't teach children about the British Empire in British schools. So to tell that story is important, but it's not easy without making it very serious and sombre, but that's the real genius of the film. It is light, it is fun, and it is loving. It's about redemption, where it's love over hate, but it’s also a really important historic document.”
I often think about how these ideas of belonging, adaptation, and inherited memory show up quietly in our own lives too. I remember being three years old, living in St. Louis, Missouri, and not understanding why every house on our street had a Christmas tree except ours. When I asked my parents why we didn’t have one, they didn’t tell me it wasn’t “our” festival — they simply got me a tree. We decorated it together, and from that moment on, Christmas became a small, shimmering family tradition of our own.
As I grew older, it became something I wanted to share with everyone I loved — a reminder that identity is not a fixed box but a space we continually build, reshape, and fill with meaning.
And in many ways, that is exactly what Gurinder Chadha has spent her career showing us: that our stories, our rebellions, our celebrations are stitched together from the places we come from and the places we choose to belong. Her films remind us that diaspora leads to the creation of an imagination that is fragmented but whole at the same time.
Which is why, even now, in a harsher and more polarised world, her storytelling feels like a gentle insistence: that love can still win over hate, that lightness can carry truth, and that all of us: migrants, misfits, and daughters of elsewhere, can find home in the stories we choose to tell.
'Christmas Karma' starring Kunal Nayyar, Eva Longoria, Hugh Bonneville, and Charithra Chandran, will be in theatres in India on December 12, 2025.
