A steady gaze has become something of a signature in Kirti Kulhari’s screen presence. Over her 15-year career, it has become a familiar feature, leaving its mark in films such as Pink (2016), Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Indu Sarkar (2017). Her kohl-rimmed eyes, coupled with the confidence of an actor assured of her craft, make for a compelling combination. It is little surprise, then, that for her debut production venture, she chose Kinaare, a story about Amina, a strong-willed caregiver who looks after her ageing parents. It is a character that resonates with the kind of women Kulhari has often portrayed, and the story struck a chord with her from the outset.
The film’s premiere at the Dharamshala International Film Festival offered Kulhari a different kind of gratification. Accustomed to gauging audience reactions as an actor, she was now watching people respond to a film she had shepherded from inception. “The feeling remains the same, but it’s multiplied manyfold,” she says. “It’s because you are at the centre of everything.” What particularly moved her was seeing audiences pick up on the details and nuances she had hoped would come through. “It’s so amazing that people can see what I envisioned,” she adds.
Producing, Kulhari says, meant living with the film through every stage of its making. “During this process, I had seen the film some 300 times,” she says with a grin. By the time it was screened, she knew every line and frame by heart.
Her connection with the material began with Amina. Kulhari was clear that the character should never be reduced to someone deserving of pity. “I saw Amina as an empowered person,” she says. Her strength, Kulhari believes, lies in accepting her circumstances and getting on with life, rather than dwelling on the life she might have had. “There is strength in accepting things for what they are.”
The film’s domestic details reinforce the realities of Amina’s everyday life: a leaking tap, a half-painted wall and little things left unattended because she has more pressing responsibilities. When her cousin Azam, played by Rajeev Siddhartha, arrives and fixes what she has been unable to, Amina is hurt to see her parents celebrate his intervention. The first few days on the sets of Kinaare tested Kulhari’s resolve. Shot in just 18 days, the film required her to oversee multiple departments, checking frames, performances, hair, make-up and costumes, before stepping in front of the camera for her own scenes. “And honestly, that made me feel like a superwoman. By the end of it, I was like, what just happened?”
She had initially wondered whether acting and producing simultaneously would prove too demanding. Instead, the experience showed her just how much she could take on. Surprisingly, she even managed six to seven hours of sleep every night. “You handle whatever you need to handle. What is not in your control, you just surrender to it,” she remarks.
Kulhari’s production house, Kintsukuroi Films, takes its name from the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. The name reflects her belief in cinema as a means of introspection. “For me, cinema is actually a reason to go within,” she says. Through her productions, she hopes to encourage audiences to question their conditioning and examine their assumptions.
With Kintsukuroi Films, Kulhari is mindful of the industry’s fixation on numbers but does not want its shifting definitions of success to dictate her choices. “I have always followed my heart,” she says. “The kind of stories I wanted to tell will always be a priority.”