After years of directing commercials and short films, Suresh Triveni made his feature debut with the feminist comedy Tumhari Sulu in 2017. The gritty crime thrillers Jalsa (2022), Daldal and Subedaar (2026) followed. With Maa Behen, Triveni returns to the world of humour led by feisty women.Maa Behen, which is out on Netflix, takes place in a pulp-inspired setting. The Hindi film stars Madhuri Dixit as a disreputable single mother and Triptii Dimri and Dharna Durga as her long-suffering daughters. The squabbling women are forced to work together when a corpse turns up in Jaya’s living room. The cast includes Ravi Kishan, Geetanjali Kulkarni and Arunoday Singh.Based on a story by Triveni and Pooja Tolani and written by Tolani, Maa Behen has been warmly received. Will there be a sequel? And how did Triveni assemble his dream cast? Here are edited excerpts from an interview with Scroll.What’s the response to Maa Behen been like?It’s been overwhelming. My phone hasn’t stopped ringing.I am loving the fact that people are debating the film. That’s what any piece of art should do. It should create a conversation, whether it’s about the craft, the content or the performances .We shot the film in 41 days. Everything is a set, with very few outdoor shoots. We made a very conscious effort in terms of craft. All of that has become part of the chatter.Dharna Durga, Madhuri Dixit and Triptii Dimri in Maa Behen (2026). Courtesy Abundantia Entertainment/Opening Image Films/Netflix.A killer title – who came up with it?I did. Titles come out at me from nowhere.This was after Tumhari Sulu came out. Tumhari Sulu had so much of goodness. I felt that I should do something else entirely. A wicked comedy with three women.I wrote until the midpoint and then got stuck. I met Pooja Tolani around this time. I liked her style of writing. She took over and wrote the screenplay and dialogue. The first draft was ready by 2021. We kept working on it.The body in a trunk is a done-to-death subject. How do you find novelty in it? How do you find the tone? I wanted to have a distinct narrative style, inspired by women’s magazines in Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi. The film is slightly dialled up, for a reason.To cast a film that has a mother and two daughters is quite a task, especially if you are looking for popular actors. So, initially we got lost a little.How did you arrive at the film’s hyper-real, over-the-top tone?My brief to the team was that this film should be a beautiful mess. It’s very messy and yet, there’s a certain aesthetic to it.The flashback is basically the fictional world. We needed a certain signature to it. What I arrived at is that rumours are always exaggerated, and rumours don’t have details.All the flashbacks are exaggerated. The women are wearing the same clothes across the sequences. This is because there are no details, it’s all hearsay.Nobody has really spoken about this, but when the flashback happens, the aspect ratio changes and the frames get cropped. It’s a narrow gaze. The music is la-la-land and orchestral.