Meet Kani Kusruti at her Goa home: “My friends tease me that ‘this is Kani’s era’; I think I’m just an average actor”

You can't find Kani Kusruti easily. Her house is off a highway, down a winding, forested lane in Goa, with no sign-posts. Google Maps will take you only so far and no further. Through the trees, I spot a likely house, and after ringing the bell, and waiting, I call her. “Are you in front of a yellow house or a green house?” she asks, in a tone which feels like she’s said the same thing a million times over.

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The first is her office, the second is home: no one’s at work, it's a public holiday. I head to the house with the green facade, and there she is, the actor who has had a brilliant 2024, with two of her films still being feted around the globe.

As Anila, the mother of a difficult 18-year-old in Shuchi Talati’s Sundance breakout ‘Girls Will Be Girls‘, she gives us a complex character rarely seen in Indian cinema. When Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) invites her crush Sri home (Kesav Binoy Kiron), it is Anila’s unexpected third-wheeling between the two which heightens tensions, leading to an even more unexpected resolution. In Payal Kapadia’s Cannes winner ‘All We Imagine As Light’, she becomes Prabha, a Malayali nurse, trying to find her comfort zone in alien Mumbai, and turning into a supportive figure to the younger, flightier Anu (Divya Prabhu), even as she finds solace in Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), an older colleague from her hospital.