BIG ON THE SCREEN

Writer-director INDIRA DHAR is no newcomer to international film festivals, but a standing ovation at Cannes for her latest film was an unforgettable experience. She talks to Shraddha Kamdar about the inspiration, her love for films and more

- Shraddha Kamdar

Indira Dhar, whose Bengali language film Putul received a standing ovation at the Marche Du Film - Festival de Cannes this year, did not become a sensation overnight. It has taken the writer-director years of hard work and grounding. She started acting in plays at the young age of nine and wrote her first script at 12! "I wanted to be an actor," she tells us one rainy afternoon, a few weeks after the "surreal" experience of her newest film being screened at Cannes. "I was in love with theatre and was a part of the stage no matter where - school, events, or at the Goethe-Institut at Max Mueller Bhavan in Kolkata. It is after almost six decades that an independent Bengali film premiered at Cannes."

Exposed to the language of acting at a young age, she realised, growing up that her potential was better used in direction, since she started seeing the little mistakes in the script during auditions. "That feeling used to worry me," she recalls. "Why did the writer write this?' I would wonder, or 'This should be the way it is written.' I soon realised I could not be an actor, I would just be pointing out the flaws!" she laughs. Even just out of her teens, recognising that was not the foundation she wanted to shape her career on, she knew she had to be a director. Cut to today, she is now doing the kind of cinema she has always wanted to associate with.