Kaanchli Life in a Slough

The official announcement of the film was made in June 2018. Dedipya Joshii had been working on the script since 2008. After reading "Kenchuli" by Vijaydan Detha, he decided to make a film based on it and started writing the first draft. Dedipya was satisfied with his fourth draft and sent a copy of it to Detha, who invited Joshii to his house in Borunda, Jodhpur. Joshii stayed with Detha for few days, getting to know him personally. Detha happily gave Joshii the rights of his story '"Kenchuli"' with a compliment saying after reading the script and talking over the phone with Joshii, he had assumed he was older and experienced in filmmaking. After meeting Joshii, Detha was surprised to see an enthusiastic young man. As soon as Joshii returned to Mumbai, he started working to produce the story into a feature film. After a few days, Detha wrote an affectionate, hopeful letter to Joshii saying:[12]

Dear Dedipya, I Have decided to give you the rights to make this story which is very close to my heart after seeing the transparency within your soul through which you perceive things and execute them in your film making as well as in real life with your immense honesty and I hope that the transparency of your soul could reach to the people when you will present "Kenchuli" on the silver screen, Best wishes.

— Vijaydan Detha to Dedipya Joshii, director of Kaanchli Life in a Slough[12]

Joshii first cast Shikha Malhotra[13] as Kajri and then approached the in-demand actor Sanjay Mishra to play Bhoja, who accepted the offer. Later, Joshii cast Narespal Singh Chouhan as Kishnu and Lalit Parimoo as Thakur in the film.

The principal photography of the film commenced in the November 2018 but during that time, Sanjay Mishra had to travel to the Busan International Film Festival for his forthcoming film Kaamyaab and the filming schedule of Kaanchli was postponed for a month. Filming began on 7 December 2018 in the interiors of Rajasthan,[14] which is extremely cold at that time of the year.[15] This led to lead female actor Shikha Malhotra having to shoot rainy scenes for the film's climax for three consecutive nights at a temperature of 2 °C (36 °F) from 1 to 3 January 2019.[16] Filming was completed on 4 January 2019.

Kaanchli had its Indian box-office release on 7 February 2020.[17][18] It performed well in the first week and its distributor Carnival Cinemas decided to continue showing the film for a second week in cinemas. In December 2020, Kaanchli had its OTT release via Ultra India on 11 December 2020, and was streamed more than 10 million times in eight months.