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I’m late reaching the cafe where Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal are waiting, because the jammed streets outside the Palais slow you down to a crawl. We’ve all had to cancel precious film tickets to be able to meet, but that’s how it goes at the Cannes film festival where the screenings and the conversation never end.
Both Chadha and Fazal, partners on and off the screen, represent the kind of acting talent that arrives in Bollywood from the outside, assesses the un-level playing field, and dives right in regardless, knowing full well that the path is not going to be easy. Right now, both are in Cannes as budding producers, looking for partnerships to expand their ventures, the first of which is Chadha’s college friend Shuchi Talati’s debut feature Girls Will Be Girls, a fresh riff on the coming-of-age genre.
Chadha, used to being trolled for her fearless espousal of liberal views, says she is dialling back from constant social media engagement, preferring to communicate in a ‘much more focussed and refined way’ through the work she plans to put out. ‘I feel it is going to get much worse before it gets better, but I like to err on the side of optimism’.
Apart from Talati’s film which is complete, they are excited about a ‘subversive’ animation film/show in the works called Doggy Stylz, about a world in which dogs are in charge, a project based on asatya ghatnaaein (false events) which sounds like fun, and another which is very Khosla-ka-Ghosla in spirit. They are also writing a couple of scripts for themselves, because ‘no one gives us exactly the kind of work we are looking for’, even though Chadha says she continues being offered interesting roles.
Fazal is now spreading his wings after his outings in such international projects as Death On The Nile, with a rugged turn in the upcoming actioner Kandahar May-end, followed by the hotly-anticipated Mirzapur season three in June. ‘Main nahin chahta ki log mujhe bold bolein, ki yaar kitni brave film banaayi hai (I don’t want to be called a ‘bold, brave’ filmmaker) because at the end of the day, no one will come to save me. I just want to tell stories of today through cinema.
Chadha, who made her Cannes debut eleven years back with Anurag Kashyap’s rousing gangster double bill, Gangs Of Wasseypur, calls herself a bit of a nerd who is thoroughly enjoying the process of making ‘true and realistic’ films. ‘Do you know what we’ve called our company? ‘Pushing Buttons’’. Her accompanying smile has a wink in it.
Restrorer returns
In 2012, Shivendra Dungarpur was invited by the Cannes Classic Section to present Uday Shankar’s 1948 dance drama Kalpana, which he had restored with the help of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation. He was here again in 2022 with another fine restoration, G Aravindan’s Thamp, and he is back this year, with Aribam Shyam Sharma’s Ishanou, more than thirty years after its original Cannes premiere in 1991.
Given Dungarpur’s regular forays on the red carpet—the 88 year old Sharma couldn’t travel because he was indisposed, but the rest of the cast was there—isn’t he becoming quite the Cannes darling? ‘I don’t know about that’, he smiles, when we meet ahead of the Ishanou premiere, ‘but I can tell you that it was a very tough competition. We were chosen from among 150 entries’.
What is his criterion for choosing the films to be restored? The idea, he says, is to find films from India’s regions which do not find support; these films were at one point celebrated both in India and outside, but today no one remembers them, and the existing prints are in terrible shape.
His ongoing projects include Nirad Mohapatra’s Maya Miriga ( 1984), and John Abraham’s Amma Ariyan ( 1986), as well as Dev Benegal’s terrific debut English August, an acerbic look at the life of a babu in moffusil India.
‘This is not to say that we don’t focus on popular cinema. We are restoring four Bimal Roy films (Do Bigha Zameen, Madhumati, Bandini, Devdas). We are also restoring Sholay, he says. Mouthwatering slate.
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