Hard not to get affected by the Padmavati row: Nandana Dev Sen

Actor Nandana Dev Sen is known for having voiced her opinion for the cause of free speech and right to creative freedom in the past. At present, when filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali is facing the pressure ahead of the release of his movie, Padmavati, Nandana, who had collaborated with him in Black (2005), rues, “Of course, I feel bad. It’s constantly one step forward, two steps backward. And, it’s not possible not to get affected or disturbed by it.”

The actor was last seen in Ketan Mehta’s Rang Rasiya that faced censorship problems. The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2008 but it finally hit theatres in India in 2014. She has always been “drawn to films” that have strong social or political consciousness. Nandana says, “I’ve done films on apartheid, on wars within India and women being its casualties, on international terrorism and suicide bombing, on LGBT rights among others. These are issues that I feel strongly about. Consequently, I seem to have specialised in obscure independent films from all over the world. But in India, given that I never pursued a mainstream career, I’ve been lucky to work with the master filmmakers.”

Her selection has been limited, and she doesn’t shy away from accepting that. “I have always been eccentric in my choices. Friends often tease me about why I choose films that are either impossible to make or impossible to sell! But that’s my taste. So, when people call me choosy it is just a generous way of saying [that I’ve been] stubborn, and often irrational (with no regrets, mind you). I have always been attracted to fresh, quirky stories, and characters that are not stereotypical. The reason why I don’t do more films is because I am drawn only to those that have a thematic layer that moves beyond being just a good or sweet story, or a star-studded cast. I’m drawn to cinema as an art form because I believe that films can truly change the way we look at the world. I believe in the transformative power of both the media,” says Sen.

PHOTO: SATISH BATE/ HT Nandana Dev Sen has always been choosy about the films she does