Dear Reader, I am glad you found me. My name is Shruti Kunke. I was unaware until I was twenty that most people who are not among the one billion in my birthland, India, cannot pronounce my name. Should that ever become a hurdle in our ephemeral connection, here is a little guide for you: Shh, Ruthie!

Today, I am a screenwriter and filmmaker based out of Toronto. That was not the case before, for many years of my adulthood. My official journey into the film and entertainment industry began in 2019 when I could no longer bear the bifurcated existence of being terribly in love with cinema while staying married to a corporate career in marketing communications. So, as a newcomer yearning to reboot my life in Canada, I traded the familiarity of a path I chose in my twenties to a wild sojourn in film school.

A cliched question that my peers and I were warned to expect from producers or agents was: “Why is this your story to tell?” This made me think of the great Maya Angelou’s quote on song birds: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.” We tell stories because we have stories to tell. As a millennial from a “broken family” (whatever that phrase even means), I understand why people tell stories. We all need witnesses to our pain and sorrows that get dismissed, our joys and dreams that are forbidden, our beliefs reaffirmed, and our imaginations engaged. For, digital society and capitalistic pursuits have hijacked our emotional articulation with little to no time left for self-knowing or true empowerment.

Through my stories, I convey my worldview and yearnings. I may not be like any of my protagonists – I have never been an embittered parent, an aspiring barber, or a gifted climber – but I do know the throes of resentment, the anxiety of being inexperienced, and the calmness of being naturally good at something.

The reason you find me on this platform is because there is more to the moving picture we see on a screen. Cinema is not just 90-minute or 10-episode clips. It reflects who we are as a people, where we are as a society, and what we stand for and against. While there is a lot that does go into producing cinematic content, like any art form, the reception of it completes the dialogue between creator and beholder.

I have always enjoyed subtextual analysis and lengthy ponderings of movies and TV shows. While there are plenty of intellectual giants in the space of film studies and film critique, the song bird in me has a humble perspective of my own – informed by the cultural conversations and social developments happening around me every single day.

There are a million variables involved in turning a script into a premiere and sometimes, the larger picture of why we are doing this in the first place can be lost in the pursuit of “chasing cars” in show business. When I hit pause briefly – rather, when it was hit for me during the 2023 strikes - I had the opportunity to watch movies and television shows again. And this time, I could see more and understand better: the technical choices, the artistic decisions, the themes, and the perspectives.

Writing scripts demand an intensity of self-confrontation and exhumation of buried wounds that can get overwhelming at times. To keep my head above water, I bring to you earnest offerings of my honest takes on what I watch. And sometimes, the stories I witness are not just on the screen. They come from travels and museum visits, books and political events, and revelations from my mental health excavations to better understand my ADHD brain.

Once again, I am glad you found me. And I hope I have resonated with you.