‘Kamli’ will make you angry, impatient, benevolent and hateful all at the same time: Sania Saeed

Actor speaks about how a story she helped evolve left an ever-lasting weight on her heart and soul

KARACHI:

A woman adorned in a black cotton saree gracefully walked into the room subconsciously touching her gorgeous crown of short crisp curls. The veteran actor, Sania Saeed, known for her exceptional roles on television and theatre has been making waves with her Cannes feature Joyland, and a soon-to-be-released Sarmad Khoosat film, Kamli. Returning to the medium after seven years, and that too with the same director, Saeed and Khoosat’s trust in each other’s craft goes a long way.

In a conversation with The Express Tribune, Saeed talked about her relationship with Khoosat, their film Kamli, its characters, and its process. What started with a conversation about shared love for sarees turned into a volume of uncloaked secrets about the collective journey of love, life and loss amongst Kamli stars.

When asked about the reason behind signing only a Khoosat production after a long hiatus from the big screen, Saeed quipped, “Nobody casts me yaar.” Jokes apart, she added that it is true. She actually wasn’t offered a film ever since the 2015 Manto.

“I chose Kamli because of its compelling and haunting storyline. The simplest and the most honest answer would be that,” shared Saeed. “Whenever Sarmad asks for a film, he asks for two reasons. Either it’s because he thinks I should do the story or when he thinks that we should work together on improving the story. This time, it was both.”

The film’s description describes Kamli as a feminocentric film that explores Hina’s (Saba Qamar) fairytale-like romance with the wanderer, Amaltas has given her wings, but Sakina (Saeed) pins her down to her dark past.

While she stayed tight-lipped about the details of her character, worried it would give the storyline away, Saeed did give away “a major hint.” She revealed that, contrary to popular opinion, Saeed is not a mother in the film and her role is completely opposite of who she is in real life. So much so that the actor had a tough time piercing through the character's skin.

“To be able to align myself with Sakina’s mentality was a difficult task for me. You know certain reactions come from the way you think, and sometimes your thoughts and actions can be burdensome. Especially when your own instincts tell you otherwise but you know your character will do it. It was strenuous justifying her actions to myself and constantly convincing myself of the reasons that compel Sakina to choose certain pathways.”

Speaking about how Zarghuna and her defiance of rigid traditions in Sang-e-Mah is the closest she’s ever gotten to her personality and essence, she blurted out the importance of tradition for Sakina. “Unlike Zarghuna, Sakina is the guardian of tradition. She has internalised the standards and ways by which the society operates and she makes sure that they’re staunched in her household.”

Saeed described Sakina’s relationship with tradition as a “parasitic” one. “But how tradition operates, it has eaten off of her and she is eating off of it. Another symbolic element is that she’s blind and so she’s holding onto something that she cannot see. It’s a blind relationship with a concept – one that many can relate to.”

A close look at the trailer and the film’s music videos shows four elements of life; air, land, water, and fire, co-existing in the same location as the characters progress through their storylines. Nodding at the decision being a conscious one, Saeed exclaimed, “The film is very elemental in most ways, even the characters. My favourite thing about Kamli is how honestly flawed the characters are. The way the story moves, it is difficult to play as an actor going through all of that.”

She took a long pause trying to figure out how to explain the narrative without giving away much. “The story is intertwined. Any detail will reveal it, but all I can say is that the journey of each character is heart-wrenching, even for me. I’ve played the character, and yet I look back and feel heavy sympathy for it. It’s loss, all kinds of it and how to deal with it...It’s painful and Sarmad doesn't make it easy.”

When asked about the trailer’s lack of dialogue, the Raqeeb Se actor said, “Sometimes words can kill it. They’re needed at places but here, the emotion-heavy film demanded to be expressed only with the art of music and expressions.”

Talking about the experience of working with Khoosat, Nimra and Omair Rana yet again, the actor rolled her eyes. “I’ve been working with them for years. Working with Sarmad is now like working in your kitchen. You know where all the utensils are, where the spices are. You’re comfortable. There’s no awkwardness or hesitation. We keep experimenting, with a trust that the product will be fine, and the process is always fun then.”

However, working with the sensational Saba was a first for the veteran actor, and it appears that Saeed was always secretly a “fan” of the Baaghi actor. “She's a very present actor. She is always in tune with the other actors, and she makes the effort, which is a very rare quality. She’s aware of other actors' methods and tries to collaborate. It was a lot of fun that way. We’d have one big party on the set. We’ve talked about life, loss, the storyline, our characters and its depths – from personal to professional – we created a different bond on that set.”

When asked about the medium she prefers, Saeed shared that she wouldn’t want to choose. “I would always be more inclined to choose a good story. Mediums do not matter as much to me. For example, theatre would have the least reach but it has the most enriched stories that I've done so far. Cinema, unfamiliar territory for us, is still growing and of course, you have to be offered a film and that character has to be something you want to do. Television, however, is something I'm most familiar with. And also, the medium is most familiar to me. It creates characters for me now and if they give me a character and I say there’s potential, it offers me the space to make changes.”

Upon what the audience should expect from a star-studded film, she gave a rather visceral answer. “We are not used to seeing characters that are flawed and nuanced like human beings are. We move as per the convenience of our lazy brains, want to see things, characters, and stories that we can grab and digest. This is not going to be one of those stories.”

"It will make you move a little, take you to the edge of your seat, it will make you angry, there’ll be some knots in your stomach. It will make you hate a character, even fall in love with some,” concluded Saeed on a dramatic note. Just how it started.

Kamli is releasing in cinemas nationwide on June 3rd.