Stories over Stardom
For Nandita Das, cinema was never the destination. It was a means to an end, a way of telling stories, starting conversations, and giving visibility to lives and experiences that often remain on the margins.
That philosophy has shaped her career as an actor and filmmaker, from her early work in Fire to her critically acclaimed directorial ventures, and continues to guide the choices she makes today.
Speaking on the sidelines of the SALA Festival in the Bay Area, Das reflected on her journey, her reluctance to chase glamour and her belief that art and storytelling will remain deeply human even as artificial intelligence reshapes the creative world.
“Being an actor, or a filmmaker, was never the dream,” says Das, who has been active in the social sector. “I was very happy doing that work when cinema unexpectedly happened to me,” she says.
“I soon realized though that cinema is a great platform,” she recalls, adding that the events and discussions based on her films gave her an opportunity to use that visibility to speak about the issues that she deeply cared for. “Slowly that social work started morphing into social advocacy,” she says.
That philosophy is evident in the kinds of projects she has chosen, both as an actor and a director. Das says that she has never consciously gone looking for a particular kind of story. Instead, the stories have found her, she reflects. Das, who is the force behind the critically acclaimed film ‘Manto’, based on the Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto’s life and work, borrows his very words: “Main afsana nahi likhta, afsana mujhe likhta hai” [I don’t write a story; the story writes me.] “It’s a similar thing,” Das said. “The stories have compelled me to tell them.” That instinct has sometimes come at a professional cost.
In an industry increasingly driven by visibility, marketability and commercial calculations, Das acknowledges that she has lost out on projects because she was not considered sufficiently marketable.
Well-wishers have also suggested that she take on more commercial films, she narrates, arguing that greater visibility could give her a larger audience, and greater financial freedom to make the films she really wants to make. “Maybe they’re right,” Das said. “But somehow I’m not able to fragment my mind.”
Her answer is not to reject commercial cinema on principle, but to accept that choices have consequences. “I’ve lost out on work owing to this. But that’s a choice you make. You can’t have it all.” For Das, the trade-off is worth it. “I’d rather do less but do work that resonates with me,” she stresses.
Modern Relationships
Film, in fact, occupies only a part of her life. She continues to engage in social advocacy outside cinema, though filmmaking takes over when she is directing. Her next film is an example of that personal investment. Das is currently working on a project exploring marriage and relationships — particularly the subtle inequalities that can exist even between two people who enter a relationship as equals.
She is attempting to raise the funding herself; a process she admits is difficult. “It is really tough,” she says. “But then, I am a freedom-loving person and want to be able to tell my story my own way.”
The film explores the nuances and dynamics of a marriage of choice in contemporary society. This tension is particularly relevant to members of the diaspora. “We have one foot in tradition and one in modernity,” she explains. However, she adds that rather than prescribing answers, the film hopes to raise some pertinent questions about relationships, gender and patriarchy.
Sometimes people continue to live in unhappy marriages, whether for their children, financial dependence, social expectations or their own conditioning. The film questions that without vilifying the man or the institution of marriage.
“I’m not trying to advocate anything,” she insists, adding, “I’m just asking some questions for us to be able to look at our relationships more honestly instead of creating a façade of ‘happy marriage.’”
In the Bay Area, Das hopes to also collaborate with people who are willing to support independent cinema. “Allies” and “fellow travellers,” she calls the people who believe in supporting independent voices the opportunity to tell stories outside the conventional filmmaking model.
The future of art in the world of AI
On the future of storytelling and the humanities, especially at a festival celebrating literature and the arts in a region increasingly dominated by conversations about artificial intelligence, Das says: “Art is not elite, it’s primal.”
She sees creativity as something fundamentally human. “From the beginning of humanity, men and women were drawing in their caves.” The impulse to create, she believes, is an instinct embedded in us.
As human beings accumulate experiences and stories, cinema and literature become ways of making sense of them. Das points to her own life as evidence. “I am who I am because the films I’ve watched, the books I’ve read, the people I’ve met — all of that makes me the person I am,” she stresses. “So how can we diminish the importance of it?”
Artificial intelligence, she believes, will undoubtedly transform the creative landscape. But she doesn’t respond to it with fear alone. “AI is here to stay and there are dangers of it but it can also empower and hasten work if used judiciously.” The challenge, she believes, is to figure out how to harness its benefits while protecting ourselves from its potential harms.
What AI cannot easily replicate, she argues, is the constantly evolving nature of human experience. “Human experience has a value that AI may not be able to replicate,” she says, adding that there is also the question of experiences that never make it into the digital record. “Everybody doesn’t document and put it out there,” she points, “So then what happens to those stories?”
That gap is precisely where Das sees an enduring role for human storytellers. “Human beings will continue to write stories, make films, paint and create,” she believes. In fact, she thinks the creative world may prove to be more resilient and survive beyond many other forms of work.
Even as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, she believes there will continue to be value in things made by human hands, and in the distinctiveness of individual experience. Her belief explains her commitment to independent storytelling. Her films may not always fit the industry’s commercial template, but they emerge from questions she feels compelled to explore.
And perhaps that is why, despite the growing pressure to be visible, marketable and commercially viable, Das remains comfortable choosing the less travelled path. She doesn’t seem interested in having it all. She would rather have what really matters to her.
