Indian film industry not making films for international audience: Irrfan

Actor believes the industry needs to come out with strong films to make a mark.

MUMBAI: Irrfan Khan is no stranger to Hollywood. The Indian actor, who uses only his first name, has played roles in acclaimed films such as Life of Pi, Slumdog Millionaire and A Mighty Heart. His new film The Lunchbox, an Indian-French-German co-production, won the Grand Rail d’Or at Critics’ Week at the 66th Cannes Film Festival and the North American movie rights were acquired by Sony Pictures Classics.

Director Ritesh Batra’s debut feature film is about a wrongly delivered lunchbox that connects a young Hindu housewife to a Catholic man played by Irrfan.

When asked if the Indian participation was taken seriously at Cannes, Irrfan said, “We still need to come up with strong films to really make our mark.” He added, “Although people know about India, we still need to make films one after the other to be talked about as a film-making country. We make films for our [Indian] audience, we are not making films for an international audience.”

He said that the Indian film industry has a diverse generation of film-makers coming up and they should diversify film-making in India. “If we go on making similar kinds of films they will have a limited appeal. We need to experiment, we need to come out with a different language, and we need to come out with different cinema.”

Irrfan, 46, told Reuters about his latest film and how he sees Indian cinema changing to become more international. “It’s a sweet love story, it’s a feel-good film, it makes you feel nice, but the narrative is very simple. The strength of the film is that it says so much without talking,” said the actor. “It is the things which the characters are not saying that are the most powerful in the film. That’s the uniqueness of the film.”

Talking about his expectations from the debutant director, he said, “I saw he [Batra] hadn’t made full-length features but he had made some short films and that gave me a clue. Ritesh is one of the directors who captures actors, their performances, and that is a great combination. I had full faith in him. There was an international team around him.” He added, “The editing happened in America, then there was the music, which I think happened in France. I knew the producers involved in the film ... were experienced producers and they know how to arrange a team.”

Irrfan has high hopes from his film and thinks that it has the language that could bridge the cultural gap by a universal storytelling language. “Indian cinema has to come of age. They are still waiting. There are elements in Indian commercial cinema which are excellent, which are original, but we need to find a story telling language which is relatable to anybody, everybody. That’s the language The Lunchbox could strike.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 30^th, 2013.                    

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