Leena Gangopadhyay

Leena Gangopadhyay is an Indian writer, producer, and director, primarily associated with the Tollywood film industry. As of January 2024, she serves as the Chairperson of West Bengal Commission for Women.^[1][2]

She is one of the founders of Kolkata based production company Magic Moments Motion Pictures along with Saibal Banerjee. She is also a Director, Script and Story writer in Organinc Studios, owned by her son Arka Ganguly.

Leena Gangopadhyay is the script writer for popular Bengali serials including 'Ishti Kutum', and 'Andarmahal'.She has also co-directed two Bengali films 'Maati' (Earth) and 'Sanjhbati' (Evening light).

Her serials have been remade in multiple regional Indian languages. 'Sreemoyee' written by Gangopadhyay was made in Hindi (as Anupama), Kannada (as Inthi Nimma Asha), Marathi (as Aai Kuthe Kay Karte), Malayalam (as Kudumbavilakku), Telugu (as Intinti Gruhalakshmi), Tamil (as Baakiyalakshmi). Yet another serial written by Leena Gangopadhyay 'Mohor' was remade in Kannada as 'Sarasu', Hindi as 'Shaurya Aur Anokhi Ki Kahani', Malayalam as ‘Koodevide', Marathi as ‘Swabhiman – Shodh Astitvacha’, Tamil as 'Kaatrukkenna Veli’ and Telugu as 'Guppedantha Manasu'.

While Leena Gangopadhyay's serials have been popular, controversy has not been far behind. She has been criticised and trolled on social media for writing stories that are regressive, called to end a few of the serials with reasons cited including lack of originality in storyline, repetitiveness in plot, the negative influence on society like the serial Guddi^[7] and lack of sensitivity in portrayal of a community or people like Ishti Kutum.^[8] However, Gangopadhyay, believes that we cannot call the serials progressive or regressive. In an interview with The Telegraph, she said “Writing for television is very different from writing novels. An author can be selfish but a scriptwriter will always have to keep her audience in mind. Television is after all a reflection of society. You cannot deny what exists in society. Regressive points of view exist. That is why we have them in television serials”.^[9]