‘People are full of awe or disdain for film fests’

Nandita Das was recently at the Cannes film festival to showcase her latest film, starting Nawazuddin Siddiqui. It was screened at the Un Certain Regard section. Nandita’s films — as an actor and, later, a director — have gone to festivals across the world and won top honours, and so she knows well how Indian viewers look at a film that travels the festival circuit.

She says, “Often, when people talk about festivals, they’re either full of awe or full of disdain for them. We have either made festivals a benchmark to gauge a film’s credibility, or tagged it a ‘festival film’, giving it the meaning of being arty and esoteric. In general, we like to label everything, so that we don’t have to look beyond it.”

Nandita explains that more often than not, festivals help a filmmaker with a tight budget reach a wider audience and new territories. At the same time, the labelling, she thinks, can be a deterrent. She says, “A lot of the independent films start their journey in festivals, but every filmmaker wants his or her film to be seen by the largest possible audience. However, often, they don’t have big enough marketing budgets and, therefore, there’s no level playing field. If such films don’t even reach the audiences, how are you to know that it’s as much for the domestic audience as it is for the international festivals! This division of masses and classes, festival and box office, have stopped independent films from reaching out to their audiences.”

Nandita Das took her latest film to Cannes last month