Social entrepreneur Gitanjali Angmo, wife of Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk, has sparked a conversation about storytelling after watching Christopher Nolan’s much-talked-about film The Odyssey.
In a recent social media post, Angmo recalled an unexpected meeting with the Oscar-winning director in New York in 2024, when The Odyssey was still just a discussion. Watching it now on the big screen, she called the experience “surreal and unforgettable.”
“What struck me most was how familiar the themes felt,” she wrote. “The hero’s journey, dharma and destiny, exile and temptation, the longing for homecoming, and a human being tested and transformed — these are not new to us. They are at the heart of the Indian imagination.”
Angmo believes India has its own vast reservoir of such narratives, yet they remain largely unexplored on the big screen with the scale and depth they deserve.
“India is sitting on a treasure-house of epics. The Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and countless regional stories carry the same timeless questions about duty, choice and human spirit. Imagine bringing them to cinema with global scale, cultural sensitivity and intellectual depth,” she said.
The Ladakh-based entrepreneur also used the moment to reflect on the direction of Hindi cinema. According to her, films today need to go beyond entertainment and take on the responsibility of shaping thought.
“Cinema is more than entertainment. It is one of our most powerful classrooms. It teaches, it questions, it inspires. Perhaps it is time Bollywood rediscovered that role and told our own epics with the ambition the world is now showing with theirs,” Angmo added.
Her post comes at a time when Nolan’s The Odyssey is being praised worldwide for its grand visual storytelling rooted in ancient myth.
