- NEW DELHI — Independent films and directors bring fame to India but they don't
get enough support once they return home from festival rounds, says actor
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who believes that movies by Anurag Kashyap, Payal Kapadia,
and Neeraj Ghaywan have done more to crack the international market than the
big Bollywood projects.
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- According to Siddiqui, indie filmmakers depict characters
from the streets and corners of India and reach audiences beyond just the
diaspora.
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- "A lot can happen if such (independent) films are
supported. We dismiss them as festival films. They get limited release and the
makers of such films don't get any support. But these are the films that bring
fame to our country," the actor told PTI in an interview here.
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- His comments come days ahead of the Cannes Film Festival
premiere of Ghaywan's "Homebound" in the Un Certain Regard section on
May 21.
Also read: Sharvari reflects on her journey after winning Best Young Actor at the Zee Cine Awards
- Siddiqui, who has travelled to Cannes with eight of his
films including Kashyap's much-acclaimed "Gangs of Wasseypur",
"The Lunchbox" by Ritesh Batra, and Aseem Ahluwalia's "Miss
Lovely", worked with Ghaywan in the second season of web series
"Sacred Games".
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- "Bollywood films are not seen by western audiences
typically, these are the films that are watched whether it is Payal Kapadia or
Neeraj Ghaywan's movies... These films create an identity for our country
because the more local, the more global," he added.
- The 51-year-old actor is equally at home with
critically-acclaimed films like "Peepli Live", "Monsoon
Shootout", and "Manto", as well as commercial hits such as
"Badlapur", "Kahaani", and "Bajrangi Bhaijaan".
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- "In our films, we don't see characters from our
society. The characters that you see in our films don't exist in our streets
and corners. If you make movies about India, then they earn a name outside
because they are real films. The big films, the so-called commercial films, I
am sorry, they still have not been able to crack that market but these small
filmmakers have already done that."
