Actor Anupria Goenka recently attended the screening of her film Bombay Stories at the Cannes Film Festival and described the experience as both fulfilling and emotional. The film is based on stories by legendary writer Saadat Hasan Manto and was screened in the market section at the prestigious festival.
Speaking about her experience, Anupria said, “It was a very fulfilling and heartwarming experience to go to Cannes with a film that is very close to one's heart, and a subject that I genuinely believe in. Plus, a story that has been written by Manto. It was all very special.”
She added that screening the film before an international audience gave her an opportunity to witness reactions from people across the globe. “It was being screened in the market section, so I got to see the response from very different people to a very Indian story, on one hand, but also a general story in terms of women and their plight, and sex workers across the world. So, I got to see the reaction of people from all different parts of the world, which was very, very thrilling. The kind of response that I had from women was especially extremely heartwarming and touching,” she shared.
Anupria also opened up about playing Saugandhi in the film, calling it one of the most layered characters she has portrayed. “Saugandhi is a very interesting character. It has all shades in it. She is a sex worker who, at the start of the film, has resigned to her fate but, you know, (she later) finds happiness in small things. She is joyful, happy. She thinks that she is in love with this one man who actually uses her,” she explained.
The actor further elaborated on the character’s journey. “And in the middle and the end of the film, you see her character go through a huge shift. She is seductive, she's sexy, and at the same time, extremely vulnerable. She is able to accept whatever is wrong in her life and rebel against it. So, there's a lot of rage and fury in her. At the same time, she's extremely productive and sisterly to another woman in the story. So, she has so much of love, feistiness, pain, sadness, sexiness—all of it. So I got to play a lot many shades in the character.”
When asked whether she considers herself a fan of Saadat Hasan Manto, Anupria answered with an emphatic yes. “Yes, of course. I don't know who wouldn't be a fan of Manto and his work. He was not just a very prolific writer of his time; he was also someone I deeply respect for the kind of sensibilities he had, the way he fought the world, the way he showed everybody the mirror in the society.”
She continued, “The way his thought process was very progressive. It challenged basic norms and brought a new wave of thinking for whosoever would care to listen. And I really respect the way he always stood his ground and continued to believe in what he did and say what he wanted to say, and used his art in the right way to make a change in the world.”
Through Bombay Stories, Anupria not only got the opportunity to bring one of Manto’s memorable characters to life but also witnessed the universal appeal of the writer’s themes at an international platform like Cannes.
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