The Wonder Women!

Actress Salony Luthra and director Pakhi Tyrewala are on cloud nine post their success together as they talk to Nikita Wadhawan about their film, connection and background

New girl on the block, actress Salony Luthra recently won the best actress award for movie Kajal directed by Pakhi Tyrewala at the 6th Bangalore short film festival, 2017. Although this is not the first time she has been awarded for her performance, this award is extra special to the actress as she was honoured with it on her birthday. ''I could not have been happier to get this news on my birthday. This film is extremely special to me as it's on the social conditioning of woman and I hope to change things with the portrayal of this role. A film about finding your inner strength and happiness,” says Salony.

Pakhi is also excited about the amazing response she has been receiving for her short film. While most of us remember her as Mishka from Jhoota Hi Sahi opposite John Abraham, Pakhi is happy to move on from that phase of her life. Talking about her new venture, the budding director wants to give credit where it is due. “The idea for the film came to my husband and I stole it form him. I knew that he would not make a short film, so I asked him to let me make it. His idea was of a much longer film and about a man, I super-imposed it as a woman’s point of view and a friend helped me with a climax idea” Pakhi said.

Learning a language

While Salony’s mother tongue is Hindi, she has been making waves in Tamil cinema. Salony even manged to master the language to accentuate her performance. “I am not a lip-sync actor, I cried tears of blood trying to learn the language. That was a really tough thing to do. I personally feel that for an actor language is not a barrier. Acting in Hindi language films is easier for me as my mother tongue is Hindi, but being a part of a movie of a different language has opened up a lot of things in me as an actor,” Salony acknowledges.

Salony has won the best actress award for her performance in her debut Tamil film Sarabham which helped her establish her foothold in the short film space. Her previous work which included Tamil short film Oliyum Oliyum, had her portray the role of a visually handicapped person who turns her disability into an asset. The film went on to be premiered & lauded at the Chicago South Asian Film Festival.

The NSD connection

Salony has been a trained under one of the best in the National school of Drama (Delhi), N K Sharma. Salony admits that his gruelling training helped her prepare as an actor.“When I started training with him, he told me that I had a commercial face and I had to choose if I wanted to be a commercial actor or a serious actor. His training has wat prepared me for this competitive life in the industry,” says Salony as she gears up for one of the most challenging acts in theatre, Blackbird Swanand Kirkire.

While Pakhi has not be a NSD student, he mother way a part of NSD. When asked why she did not walk her mother footsteps she says, “I was a bad person who thought NSD was too boring,”

Women centric

Kajal has been talked about for its strong & hard hitting subject on the issues faced by women increasingly in our society. It will soon be premiered worldwide at the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) 2017 in the short film category. Apart from film festivals Paki also plans to take this film out to the young women of this country.“First step is going to be the festival round, then before we sell it to the web we want to go out to all women in the country as this is a film made for women. Older women have made up their mind about how they so we want to live, we want to reach out to the young women and do a Q&A and want to hear their stories out and then we will sell it,” says Pakhi as she is no hurry to sell it.

In her short span of her journey in the industry Salony has consciously chosen to focus on stories that matter and she considers herself fortunate to be given a chance to play such roles. “After training in NSD I came to Mumbai, I had a choice to do anything that comes my way like commercial films since I was a model I had a lot of commercial films offered to me. Since I am very passionate about the craft of acting I wanted to give myself more time and establish myself as an actor first. So my choice of films have been content based, like my fist film

Sarabham, I never thought that I would go and debut in Tamil and had never gone to that part of India. But the script blew my mind and I love well written scripts. It is a women’s journey and there are very few films where a woman’s character is the lead. So I have been very fortunate and blessed and all the films that I have done from Sarabham to Oliyum Oliyum and my play has been very women oriented. I am very grateful to be a part of subjects like this as I really connect with them,” says Salony.

No words only action

In the short film Kajal, Salony has no dialogues and that was a challenge for her as an actor and for the director as well. “Salony has some apprehensions when I told her that there would be no dialogues and now it was her headache to figure out hwo she wants to go ahead with it (laughs). But she managed it beautifully,” Pakhi says.

Salony added, “I surrender to the director. When I first read the script I was puzzled as to how would I approach it but then she said that just leave it to me. I never missed the dialogues even once. ‘The less said is more’ is perfectly apt for this film. After we finished shooting it stayed with me for 2-3 weeks. It changed something inside me as a person,”