Margarita with a Straw

2015 1h 40m HI

👍

6.8

SOLID

🍅

86%

FRESH

👌

METACRITIC

⭐

7.2

IMDB

★6.8TMDB · 87🍅86%Rotten Tomatoes●63Metacritic★7.2IMDB · 4,215

Drama

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

A rebellious young woman with cerebral palsy leaves India to study in New York. On her journey of self-discovery, she unexpectedly falls in love.

“Some stories are better left unspoiled.”

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Cast

Kalki Koechlin
Laila Kapoor
Revathi
Shubhangini Kapoor
Sayani Gupta
Khanum
Hussain Dalal
Dhruv
William Moseley
Jared
Kuljeet Singh
Baljit Kapoor
Malhar Khushu
Monu Kapoor
Tenzing Dalha
Nima

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Shonali Bose
Writers: Shonali Bose, Nilesh Maniyar
Languages: Hindi
Countries: India

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $0.9M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 11 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Shonali Bose, shot by Anne Misawa. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Mikey McCleary. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Monisha R Baldawa shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Kalki Koechlin and Revathi and Sayani Gupta carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt2929690 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

Only 87 TMDB ratings — you're getting ahead of the curve on this one.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Shonali Bose directs. Anne Misawa behind the camera. Mikey McCleary scores. Monisha R Baldawa cuts. Profitable at the box office. Produced in India. Dialogue in Hindi.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Shot for just $0.9M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
2Released 11 years ago.
3Directed by Shonali Bose, shot by Anne Misawa. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by Mikey McCleary. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor Monisha R Baldawa shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Kalki Koechlin and Revathi and Sayani Gupta carry the top of the cast.
7IMDB entry: tt2929690 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
8Only 87 TMDB ratings — you're getting ahead of the curve on this one.
9Classified under 10 themes, including "new york city", "self-discovery", "bisexuality", "wheelchair".

The technical file

Cinematography: Anne Misawa
Original score: Mikey McCleary
Editing: Monisha R Baldawa
Production design: Prasun Chakraborthy
Costume design: Niharika Bhasin
Makeup / hair: Virginia Holmes
Runtime: 100 min · 1h 40m
Status: Released
Budget: $900,000
Box office: $1,000,000
Return: 111% of budget
Original language: HI
Certification (US): A
IMDB: Margarita with a Straw (2015)
Rotten Tomatoes: 86% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 63/100
IMDB rating: 7.2/10 · 4,215 votes
MPAA: Not Rated

Awards

17 wins & 20 nominations total

Also by

Shonali Bose

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

badelf2026-10-02
★ 6/10
Summary: 6/10: a genuinely brave premise undone by a director unwilling to cast the authenticity her story demanded. A few movies dare to ask a question so rarely posed on screen that the asking itself feels like an act of courage. Margarita With a Straw wants to follow a young woman with cerebral palsy through the messy, hungry, hormonal business of growing up, through the desire, rejection, queerness, and the particular impatience of a mind that has never been given permission to want things out loud. That ambition deserves real credit. Disability on screen is so often reduced to inspiration or tragedy. Shonali Bose's film at least tries for something closer to the truth, a woman who is horny and funny and timid and brave in roughly the same proportions as anyone else her age. Kalki Koechlin, as Laila, commits fully to the physical demands of the role, and the supporting cast, particularly Revathi as her mother and Sayani Gupta as her lover, bring real warmth and specificity to a script that doesn't always deserve them. Koechlin's performance has been celebrated, including with a National Award, and I understand why; there's commitment here, and real intelligence in how she approaches Laila's rage and appetite. But commitment is not the same as truth. Watch closely and you might see the tattles in the fine muscles of the face. She is clearly a healthy young woman performing disability. It's a subtle untruth, but it accumulates, and it kept pulling me out of a film that otherwise wanted me fully inside Laila's head. Which raises the question the film never adequately answers: why didn't Bose cast an actress who actually has cerebral palsy? India produces something close to a feature film a day; the idea that the Indian film industry didn't have a disabled actress capable of carrying this role borders on ludicrous. And even granting, generously, that no trained actress with CP existed, any truly serious director can build a performance from a non-actor with otherwise good bones. Javier Fesser did exactly this with Campeones (2018), casting performers with real developmental disabilities and shaping something that felt lived-in rather than studied. Issa López did something structurally similar, if somewhat darker, in Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017), pulling a cast of children who'd never acted before into performances of real anguish and tenderness. Authenticity, in both cases, wasn't a limitation directors worked around; it was the foundation they built on. There's a second, stranger failure of nerve sitting right alongside the first. Koechlin, of French parentage, is visually distinct from the Indian family the film places her in, and the script never once acknowledges it, not through adoption, not through any other explanation. A film that wants to be about belonging and becoming, can not just drop this fault on the audience and forget about it. That particular silence reads, sadly, like a director who never noticed the dissonance she put on screen. None of Bose's errors erases what works. The film's frankness about disabled sexuality remains genuinely rare, and its refusal to smooth Laila into something palatable or saintly is, on its own terms, a small act of rebellion. But bravery of concept isn't the same as rigor of execution, and Margarita With a Straw keeps choosing the easier path at exactly the moments it should have pushed harder, toward the actress who could have made this undeniable instead of merely admirable.

Production companies