IS GLOBAL ACCLAIM, A KISS OF DEATH?
Actors who’ve worked in foreign films say that they sometimes do face a slight bias in Bollywood
of Pi, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012) and was also a guest star on the latest third season of Star Trek: Discovery. He says, “They may think, ‘oh these people are of a different league and they don’t want to work with us’. Or they may think we are too expensive or too arrogant. But nobody has asked me that since I am doing an international film, will I ever be interested in an Indian film. I work in films of all languages in India.”
While filmmak er Vivek Agnihotri does not want to delve into the statement made by Kapur and Pookutty, he believes that there is indeed a culture of isolation. “Anupam Kher went to Hollywood and he does not get much work here anymore,” he says.
But filmmaker Rima Das, whose film Village Rockstars was India’s official entry for the Oscars 2018, in the Best Foreign Language Film Category, begs to differ. “My journey is very different. I self-produced films and haven’t worked with studios yet so I can’t really say whether international acclaim hampers your chances in India. In fact, after the international acclaim people started paying more attention to my films and it opened new windows in terms of marketing and distribution for me,” she says.
Many have even contested that mediocrity will always be threatened and intimidated by brilliance and that is why many who work in the West, no longer get the kind of roles they used to in Bollywood. But trade analyst Atul Mohan does not agree with Kapur. “Global recognition can never bring any hurdles to one’s profile. And anyway, how many of international awards do we even manage to get. Don’t forget how well Irrfan was doing, in India as well as abroad,” he says.