Actress Rupsha Guha’s film How Are You Feroz?, starring Schiraaz Tanksalwala, Ashoke Viswanathan, Kheya Chattopadhyay, Rana Basu Thakur and Bidyut Das, has been nominated for Best Feature Film at Toronto International Women Film Festival. How Are You Feroz?, which has also won Best Feature Film at Berlin Indie Film Festival, tells the story of an antique art dealer at crossroads to decide whether the antiques in his possession are just transactional objects for his business or essential part of his being. A t2 chat with the actress-turned-film-maker.

Your film How Are You Feroz? has been officially nominated for Best Feature Film at Toronto International Women Film Festival. When did you receive the news? What was your first reaction?

It was sometime around mid-May when I came to know of the nomination at the Toronto International Women Film Festival and the very next day I was informed that my film had got the Best Feature Film at the Berlin Indie Festival. It was nothing less than a double whammy. I immediately shared it with my crew. It was an exceptional occasion for us.

What does it mean to you and the film to be nominated in this fest?

Every artiste craves some validation for the work they do. This was my first feature. It was made under very trying circumstances during the third wave of Covid outbreak. With some friends pitching in with financial and technical assistance, we took up the challenge to push the project through. It got done because we believed in a common vision. It is quite fulfilling to find our efforts being acknowledged finally.

What kind of feedback did you get from them?

I guess getting nominated was feedback enough. This means even while working under dire constraints, our film How are you Feroz? has qualitatively lived up to the best standards of international cinema. There will be a screening when the festival formally opens to audiences in September 2023. This is the first notification. Again it’s up to us where we wish to screen it.

Why do you think it was nominated?

Besides the fact that this festival foregrounds the voice of women filmmakers from around the world, I think it was nominated and got the best film because of the content and the craft. I took up a theme which was local in setting, but universal in appeal. The crisis in Feroz is something that every emotionally intelligent person goes through sometime in their lives. It is frankly an age-old predicament manifesting itself in a contemporary situation. Sometimes there is a cleft between the mind and the heart and hence a conflict.

Tell us about the win at the Berlin Indie Film Festival.

It was frankly quite unexpected. I had to re-check it quite a few times before the news sunk in. To get the best film award in an international competition for the first feature was not something I was counting on too vigorously. I still cannot believe it.

Will you release the film in Calcutta?

Of course, I will try to release this film in Calcutta. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to take the film back to the city, to the city which has given me this story and the conviction to tell it.

What is the genesis of this feature?

The origin was space. I went to the house of an antique dealer. There were so many contradictory and conflicting stories in the art pieces that have no substitute. Almost everyone has felt a sensory relation with objects which have travelled through time. This relation has always attracted and intrigued me and I wanted to explore that through my narrative.

How did the idea come to you?

The moment I met the antique art dealer Schiraaz I was struck by the passion and verve with which he told me stories about his possession, which led me to the question — does he really want to sell? That was the trigger for the story. The main protagonist Feroz is based on this man but the narrative largely is a figment of my imagination.

Why did you feel it was necessary to tell the story?

Because I felt its relevance in contemporary times. The struggle and coming to terms of an individual with himself. The need to stay back through creation in the face of immense loss. To merge and be identified with them. This is a general take on any artist. In my story the central character of Feroz, although not an artist himself, is so passionate about art that he conjures them to life and becomes one with that world.

Why turn to direction?

I consider myself an actor first and as an actor I have experienced many narratives play out through me. It was natural that those experiences would create a desire to create narratives in their wake. As a director I wanted to give voice to those traces of narratives which had already, unknown to me, become a part of my subconscious. I wanted to share my imagination with everyone.