Lust Stories 2 gathers four Hindi short films about desire, made by R. Balki, Konkona Sen Sharma, Sujoy Ghosh and Amit Ravindernath Sharma. It opens with a grandmother who will not bless an arranged match until the couple have slept together, and its most decorated segment is the one that follows.

Lust Stories 2 is a Hindi-language anthology film released on Netflix on June 29, 2023. It runs 132 minutes and is made of four short films, each by a different director: R. Balki, Konkona Sen Sharma, Sujoy Ghosh and Amit Ravindernath Sharma. The first of them sets the tone with a premise that went on to define how the film was talked about: a grandmother, played by Neena Gupta, who refuses to approve her granddaughter’s engagement until the young couple have had sex and can tell her that the chemistry is there.

The film is a sequel to Lust Stories, from 2018, and was produced by the same pair: Ronnie Screwvala, through RSVP Movies, and Ashi Dua Sara, through Flying Unicorn Entertainment. Its ensemble cast includes Mrunal Thakur, Angad Bedi, Neena Gupta, Tillotama Shome, Amruta Subhash, Vijay Varma, Tamannaah Bhatia, Kajol and Kumud Mishra. The four segments share nothing but a theme and a running order; the characters never cross from one story into another.

A franchise built on four directors

The first Lust Stories premiered on Netflix on June 15, 2018, with segments by Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee and Karan Johar. It was the middle film of a trilogy of anthologies by those four directors, after Bombay Talkies in 2013 and before Ghost Stories in 2020. In India it was discussed above all for the way it put women’s desire at the centre of every story, and it went on to receive two nominations at the 47th International Emmy Awards: best TV movie or miniseries, and best actress for Radhika Apte.

For the second instalment, the producers kept the format and the subject and changed every director. The four filmmakers come from very different places: an advertising veteran known for comedies built on an unusual premise, an actor who had moved into directing, a specialist in thrillers with a twist, and the director of one of the most successful family comedies of recent Hindi cinema. The result is less a single film than four answers to the same word.

Made for Each Other: R. Balki’s grandmother

The opening segment, Made for Each Other, is directed by R. Balki. Veda, played by Mrunal Thakur, and Arjun, played by Angad Bedi, look like the ideal match on paper: similar ambitions, similar jobs, similar families. Their parents meet happily to arrange the marriage, but Veda’s grandmother objects. Before she agrees, she wants the two of them to sleep together, so that they can find out whether their marriage will work in bed as well as on paper. When Veda later admits to her that she has not yet reached orgasm, the grandmother’s advice is simply to keep trying.

Balki came to cinema from advertising and has built a career on comedies that hang on an unexpected idea: a romance with a wide age gap in Cheeni Kum (2007), a boy with a rare ageing disorder in Paa (2009), a campaign for cheap sanitary pads in Pad Man (2018). Neena Gupta’s casting connects the segment to the film’s closing director. Her return to leading roles began with Badhaai Ho (2018), Amit Ravindernath Sharma’s comedy about a late pregnancy. Mrunal Thakur had appeared in Super 30 and in the Telugu romance Sita Ramam (2022).

The Mirror: the segment that won the awards

The second segment, The Mirror, is directed by Konkona Sen Sharma, from a story she wrote with Pooja Tolani. Ishita, played by Tillotama Shome, lives alone in a large apartment. One afternoon she comes home early and finds Seema, the woman who works in her home, played by Amruta Subhash, having sex in Ishita’s bed with her husband, Kamal (Shrikant Yadav). Instead of confronting them, Ishita hides and watches, and keeps coming back. Seema notices her through a mirror and says nothing. Sen Sharma herself is heard as the voice of Ishita’s friend.

Konkona Sen Sharma made her name as an actor, in films such as Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, directed by her mother, Aparna Sen, before directing her first feature, A Death in the Gunj, in 2017. In 2021 she directed Geeli Pucchi, one of the four stories in another Netflix anthology, Ajeeb Daastaans. Tillotama Shome is known internationally for Monsoon Wedding and for Sir (2018), in which she played a domestic worker; in The Mirror she plays the employer. Amruta Subhash, a Marathi stage and screen actor, had played the mother of Ranveer Singh’s character in Gully Boy and appeared in Sacred Games.

The Mirror is the part of Lust Stories 2 that left the clearest mark on the record. At the 2023 Filmfare OTT Awards, the film won best web original film in the critics’ category, and Amruta Subhash won best supporting actress in a web original film. Sen Sharma was nominated for best director, and she and Pooja Tolani were nominated for both story and original screenplay. In Indian coverage of the anthology, it was the segment most often singled out.

Sex with Ex: Sujoy Ghosh goes to the hills

The third segment, Sex with Ex, is directed by Sujoy Ghosh and is the closest the anthology comes to a thriller. Vijay, played by Vijay Varma, is in a strained marriage to Anu (Mukti Mohan). While driving and talking on a video call, he crashes his car on a remote road and walks to a nearby village to look for help. There he hears a voice he knows: it belongs to Shanti, played by Tamannaah Bhatia, his first wife, who vanished without explanation years earlier. She tells him he should leave before it gets late. He stays, and the conversation that follows is where the segment’s secrets lie.

Ghosh’s best-known film is Kahaani (2012), a thriller with Vidya Balan built around a final twist; he followed it with Badla (2019) and, a few months after Lust Stories 2, with Jaane Jaan, another Netflix film in which Vijay Varma also appears. Varma had broken through in Gully Boy and then in Darlings (2022) and Dahaad (2023). Tamannaah Bhatia is one of the best-known stars of Telugu and Tamil cinema, seen worldwide in the two Baahubali films.

Tilchatta: Amit Ravindernath Sharma closes

The closing segment, Tilchatta, the Hindi word for cockroach, is directed by Amit Ravindernath Sharma. Kajol plays Devyani, the wife of Suraj Singh, played by Kumud Mishra, a former royal living in a decaying mansion who preys on the women who work there. When the house’s maid stops coming to work after Suraj assaults her, Devyani hires a replacement, Rekha (Anushka Kaushik), and the choice is not as innocent as it looks. The household also includes Devyani’s son, Ankur (Zeeshan Nadaf). Where Devyani’s plan leads is the anthology’s last turn, and it is better discovered than described.

Amit Ravindernath Sharma directed Tevar (2015) and Badhaai Ho, which won the National Film Award for best popular film providing wholesome entertainment, and later Maidaan (2024), a sports drama about the coach of India’s national football team. For Kajol, one of the biggest names of 1990s Hindi cinema, Tilchatta came after Tribhanga (2021), her first film made directly for Netflix. Kumud Mishra is a veteran character actor whose credits include Rockstar and Article 15.

Music, camera and the original film’s legacy

The music is credited to Raja Narayan Deb, Aman Pant, Sagar Desai and Subhajit Mukherjee. The soundtrack includes Khelo Khellum, composed by Aman Pant with lyrics by Shellee, and a recreated version by Raja Narayan Deb of Jab Koi Baat Bigad Jaaye, the song composed by Rajesh Roshan with lyrics by Indeevar. The cinematographers credited are Tapan Tushar Basu, Anand Bansal and P. C. Sreeram, the director of photography on several of Balki’s earlier films, including Cheeni Kum and Paa.

Three years later, a third instalment

The franchise did not stop at two. Lust Stories 3 premiered on Netflix on September 18, 2026, again produced by Ronnie Screwvala and Ashi Dua Sara, with four new directors: Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra and Vishal Bhardwaj. Two names from the second film are in its cast, Konkona Sen Sharma and Vijay Varma, alongside Radhika Apte, the Emmy nominee of the first. At 165 minutes it is the longest of the three.

Seen from here, Lust Stories 2 sits between two better-defined films: the first, with its Emmy nominations and its reputation for talking frankly about women’s desire, and the third, built on bigger names behind the camera. Its own identity is split in two. The image most people remember is Neena Gupta’s grandmother asking for proof of chemistry before a wedding; the segment that collected the awards is Konkona Sen Sharma’s quieter story of two women and a mirror. How the other two segments sit beside them depends on what the viewer comes to an anthology for: four directors were given the same word, and they did not agree on what it means.