Sonali Bendre lends her name to Marathi cinema with Sohla

MUMBAI: Actors turned presenters usually pick films for visibility. Sonali Bendre appears to have picked hers for the opposite reason. Sohla, releasing in cinemas on 16th October, marks her first outing as a film presenter, and rather than a big commercial swing, she has chosen a quiet Marathi story about hope, resilience and what the makers describe as the quiet strength of the human spirit, a curiously understated first bet for someone with her profile.

The film also marks a strategic pivot for its producers. Sohla is Rose Movies’ first foray into Marathi cinema, produced alongside Carryon Fiilms by Sachin Srivastav, Ratna Srivastava and Kavita Bagban, and written and directed by Saaikat Bagbaan. For Rose Movies, the venture is a deliberate entry into regional storytelling, one that reflects a broader industry pattern of banners looking beyond Hindi cinema to tap into what has become one of the strongest growth drivers in India’s entertainment landscape. The stated ambition, to work with strong local talent while bringing the studio’s own storytelling craft to new audiences, is a fairly clear signal that this is the first of several regional bets rather than a one-off.

Bendre’s own framing of the decision leans heavily on emotional resonance rather than commercial calculation. She has said she is drawn to stories that stay with audiences long after they end, and that Sohla connected with her instantly through its focus on hope, resilience and the quiet strength found in ordinary people, values she says she has come to hold closer over the years. As she steps into the presenter role, her stated intent is to champion films that move audiences emotionally while surfacing storytellers who deserve wider discovery, positioning this less as a one-time credit and more as the start of a curatorial project.

Bagbaan, for his part, describes the collaboration as the kind every filmmaker hopes for: a producer and presenter who believe in the story as much as the people who wrote it. He credits Rose Movies and Bendre with giving the project a strong sense of encouragement while allowing him to stay true to the story he set out to tell, a detail that matters in an industry where commercial backers often reshape smaller, rooted films to fit bigger audiences.

Taken together, Sohla reads as a calculated act of restraint from everyone involved. Rose Movies is testing regional cinema without diluting its storytelling instincts, Bendre is using her name to back substance over scale, and Bagbaan gets to make the film he intended to make in the first place. If regional cinema’s rise in India continues at its current pace, backers willing to make that kind of quiet, values-led bet early may end up looking rather prescient.