In this charged and luminous episode of Red Tent Storytellers, filmmaker Vaishnavi Sundar joins Peeja Blackbird and Nat La Pirate for a conversation that unfolds like a manifesto in motion — equal parts grief, grit, and gallows humor. From her childhood in patriarchal India to her evolution as one of the fiercest feminist documentarians of our time, Vaishnavi takes us through the making of Behind the Looking Glass — a film that shatters the silence surrounding the wives and children of men who claim to be women.

What begins as a discussion of filmmaking becomes something far more sacred: a reflection on the inheritance of womanhood, the solitude of resistance, and the quiet miracle of hope. Vaishnavi speaks of cleaning floors while men dined, of learning to listen to her own body, of creating art from the ashes of erasure. She reminds us that hope isn’t fragile — it’s defiant. It takes courage to imagine a freer world while living inside a broken one.

This episode is a love letter to women who refuse to disappear — the storytellers, the fighters, the dreamers, and the mothers still daring to believe that art can be weapon and balm at once.

Vaishnavi Sundar is an Indian filmmaker, writer, and activist — founder of Lime Soda Films and the global platform Women Making Films. Her body of work, spanning over a decade, exposes the cracks in culture where women’s voices have been buried: from But What Was She Wearing? — India’s only documentary on workplace sexual harassment — to Dysphoric and Behind the Looking Glass, which dare to center women erased by gender ideology.

Driven by what she calls “humor and rage,” Vaishnavi has built her career without film-school privilege — learning by doing, failing loudly, and refusing to bow to censorship. In this episode, she speaks of filmmaking as both labor and liberation: “It felt like birth,” she says, recalling her first film. “It was sweat, exhaustion, and joy — proof that I existed.”

Her work is not entertainment; it’s testimony. Her art is a torch passed from hand to hand — proof that women everywhere are still here, still seeing, still filming.

Vaishnavi reminds us that every woman has a story — and every story deserves to be heard, unfiltered and unafraid.

If her words moved you, follow and support her work at Lime Soda Films and explore her documentaries on YouTube.

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