The Oscar campaign for Homebound has begun in the US, with a screening recently kept there to promote the film. Filmmaker Kiran Rao, whose film Lapataa Ladies was India’s Oscar entry last year, is happy for the Neeraj Ghaywan-directorial. What’s common between both the films is that they are both small-town stories.
Ask her why she thinks juries select such small stories to be India’s representation at the Oscars and Kiran Rao says, “I believe that somewhere we’ve had big commercial cinema move away from stories of our villages, of our small towns, the struggles of farmers and working class people. Across the years, the juries have chosen these stories to represent India because they feel, perhaps, more authentic representation of the broader masses from this country.”
Watch the entire video interview with Kiran Rao here:
She adds, “They’re also telling unusual stories because they are going to small towns or villages or choosing backdrops that are not typical for commercial films. It’s a great move because it helps people discover the many kinds of cinema and the many kinds of stories that we have, that can be very valid and happen at the same time. You have people going to Mars and big grand weddings in this country, but that’s not the only story of India. There is a story of a farmer, there’s a story of migrant workers, the story of women getting lost. It feels like an authentic image of many kinds of India that are there.”
But even after critical acclaim globally, these films don’t succeed at the Indian box office. Why is it so? “That’s actually because of a change in theatrical watching habits. People are going less and less, I know it myself. They need a very strong reason to go to a cinema because so many things just come within 8 weeks to their TV screens, it’s easy enough sometimes for people to find it. But when they feel the pressure of something coming, maybe through marketing, that builds up a certain kind of pressure and excitement and it also happens when word-of-mouth builds up.”
She asserts that having new faces also adds to the challenge. “When you have new actors like in Kill, Lakshya was pretty new, and my caste in Laapataa Ladies was unknown, the pressure to go and sample a film in a cinema is sometimes inconvenient. It’s definitely expensive for a family to go to see films today, those reasons are why you wait to hear about a film. You wait to know ke jana chahiye ya nahi, because it’s a matter of financial consideration, as well as convenience,” she ends.
