What Girls Want is a South Asian–American dramedy about mothers, daughters, and the uncomfortable truths we hide to keep families intact. The film follows Divya, a late-20s Indian American woman who returns home for her grandmother’s birthday, expecting nothing more than the usual chaos of a family and friends gathering. Instead, she discovers that her widowed mother is secretly seeing her late father’s best friend. Set almost entirely during a single birthday party, the film unfolds beneath the surface of celebration. Conversations are polite, smiles are forced, and emotions are tightly controlled while Divya spirals internally, torn between her mother’s right to move on and her own unresolved grief. At the heart of her reaction is a deeper fear: that moving on means her father will slowly be erased, replaced, and eventually forgotten. The tension is not explosive, but suffocating, revealing how families often suppress the most important conversations in order to appear “normal.”

This story is deeply personal to the team. "Growing up in a South Asian household, I witnessed how grief, desire, and emotional needs, especially for women are rarely spoken about openly. After losing my father, I became acutely aware of how quickly widowed mothers are expected to sacrifice companionship in the name of respectability, while daughters are expected to uphold tradition even when it hurts them. What Girls Want was born from this silence, and from the complicated realization that love and loss don’t follow rules. What makes this film unique is its balance of humor and discomfort, the absurdity of a birthday party continuing as something deeply painful brews underneath. No one in the film is a villain; each character is acting out of fear, love, and survival." said the director.

What do women actually want once grief stops being the center of their lives? Is it wrong to want companionship again? And how do we make space for that without feeling like we’re betraying the past? Support us and find out! If this story connects with you in any way, I’d love for you to be part of this journey, whether by donating, sharing, or simply cheering us on. It truly means more than you know. Thank you for being here and for supporting independent stories like this.