Sunil Shanbag is an Indian theatre director, screenwriter and documentary film-maker. He has graduated from Mumbai University, and although he didn't have any formal training in theatre, he has worked extensively with Satyadev Dubey, who considers him one of his foremost protégés.

Girangaon was a name of an area now part of central Mumbai, India, which at one time had almost 130 textile mills, with the majority being cotton mills. The mills of Girangaon contributed significantly to the prosperity and growth of Mumbai during the later nineteenth century and for the transformation of Mumbai into a major industrial metropolis. Girangaon covered an area of 600 acres (2.4 km2), not including the workers' housing. The mill workers lived in a community, and they fostered a unique culture which shaped Mumbai at the turn of the twentieth century. This textile industry flourished until the early 2000s after which most of the mills were shut down, as the owners deemed them unprofitable and declared they were incapable of paying their workers' wages.