- 1 giorno fa
Intervista a Payal Kapadiya, prima regista indiana a essere premiata al Festival di Cannes, dove ha vinto il Grand Prix Speciale della Giuria presieduta da Greta Gerwig con il suo All We Imagine As Light. In sala dal 10 ottobre.
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00:00Sì, quando qualcosa è buono, diciamo che è da Germania!
00:04Sì, scusa, chi me lo manda?
00:16Non c'è scritto nulla, ma in Germania.
00:19Tuo marito non vive lì?
00:21I really loved your movie, by the way, I watched it in Cannes.
00:25It's really beautiful.
00:27Thank you.
00:28When I saw it, I thought about Klimt, the beautiful painting with the three ages of women.
00:37And so I wanted to know if you ever thought about Klimt painting and where did it come to the
00:43idea to show us the Indian women's situation with three different stages of life?
00:55I actually didn't see this painting, so I'm really curious now to watch it.
01:01Okay.
01:02Thank you for this reference.
01:05So I was, yeah, like you said, it was more like I wanted to have women at different ages and
01:14they could be like the life of one woman also perhaps, and to have this chronology of time between women.
01:22And I also think that sometimes friendship across ages is interesting because you can teach each other a lot of
01:31things.
01:33And so that was the reason I had these three women.
01:37And they're also different from each other.
01:41Like Prabha is in a relationship which she can't get out of because of her own inhibitions.
01:48And, you know, she's, and that relationship, even though it's with a guy, she didn't know so well.
01:55It's considered very legitimate in India, you know, because she's married and it's, it's, they accept it.
02:01But Anu, like, she's in love with a guy, but people don't like this kind of relationship.
02:07So it's considered illegitimate.
02:10So I was interested in all this different ways of looking at male-female relationships.
02:17And then there's Parvati who's like, I don't need anybody.
02:21One of them says that she didn't realize so much time has passed.
02:28She says, city does that to you.
02:31She, the city is still your time.
02:33So I wanted to know if you agree with that.
02:35Do you believe that living in a big city could still have time?
02:39I was, actually, that's why I made the film in two parts.
02:42Because the first part is like the city, which is very fast.
02:47And there are a lot of days that pass and montage that's more quick.
02:50And in the second part of the film, it's very slow.
02:54It's almost like it's one day.
02:56And when they go on the trip to the sea.
02:59So I wanted to have this different feeling of time.
03:02Because sometimes I think in cities, we are living to work and working to live.
03:07And it becomes just a cycle of the day after day going on.
03:12And in India, we don't have very good laws of labor.
03:17So vacation, leave and all these kind of things, the amount of hours you work is not very well regulated.
03:25So I think it was, that's the complexity of big cities, you know.
03:30Like you have an opportunity, you can get a possibility to work.
03:34And, you know, it's a little better than back in the countryside financially.
03:38But it's not a very nice life, getting, you know, traveling two hours in the train every day, getting to
03:44work.
03:45You come home, you just have the time to eat and go to sleep.
03:48And then again the next day.
03:50So I wanted to kind of talk about all this.
03:52Since in cinema, maybe in American cinema, Italian not so much, but women really are telling more and more their
04:07stories.
04:08And there's a huge debate on female characters, female representation in movies.
04:13I was to you to be the first Indian director in general to be awarded in Cannes.
04:20And how important is to really tell women's stories in cinema?
04:24I think it's very important.
04:28It's so late, like we are in 2024 and we are still thinking about why there are not enough women
04:34selected in the Cannes Film Festival.
04:36Why they're not winning.
04:37Come on.
04:38Like now, things should have changed faster, don't you think?
04:42So it's really a pity.
04:44And in India also, now more and more women are making films.
04:50But it's still departments like cinematography and, you know, sound where you don't see enough women.
04:58So I think there's still a long sort of way to go.
05:02But this year in the festival, almost every section had a film from India.
05:06And three, I think there was another Indian female film as well.
05:11And there were other films in different sections where there were directors who were women.
05:16So that I think is very nice to see.
05:19But it's still a really long way to go.
05:23I'm going to say a terrible thing, but it's real.
05:27In Italy, many times under our reviews, we see comments like, main comments that say,
05:36if the protagonist, if the main character is a woman, I can't relate.
05:42I can't empathize with her.
05:46What are you like?
05:47This is ridiculous.
05:49It's something, I mean, maybe they can relate with a green alien, but not with a woman.
05:57Wow, that's a great line.
05:59I'm going to save this.
06:00Is it okay if I quote you?
06:02Yeah, okay.
06:03You can use it.
06:03Thank you.
06:04But it's something terrible.
06:06But many, many men think like that.
06:10So why, in your opinion, and why it's so difficult to make a portion of the audience empathize with a
06:20woman's story?
06:21Still, as you were saying in 2024, it's absurd.
06:25I know, like yesterday I was at a Q&A and there's a person who asked me in the audience,
06:30ah, so you made a film about all these women.
06:32And is it a feminist manifesto?
06:34And I said, when women make films about women just hanging out, it's called a feminist manifesto.
06:40And men make these films all the time.
06:42So, you know, it's just, it's just life.
06:45It's the life that I know.
06:48I think it's, it's really a pity that, that we have to make this kind of distinction.
06:54And I feel sorry for all those men who do identify more with green aliens than women.
07:01Yeah.
07:03I don't know what to say.
07:04It makes me want to cry.
07:06No, I'm so sorry.
07:08But I feel you.
07:10I feel the same thing.
07:10Yeah, like it's so frustrating.
07:12It's terrible.
07:13But we also see in your movie that the youngest girl, the youngest woman is a lot biased by other
07:22people
07:23because she's beautiful, she's young, and everybody thinks that she's flirting with everybody.
07:30So why, and their family wants her to marry.
07:33So why, in your opinion, women are, even in 2024, are still defined by who they marry or who they
07:43are with?
07:44Yeah, no, that's a really good question.
07:45And this was one of the reasons I made this film because I was very frustrated with, you know,
07:52I wanted to have characters in the film who have financial independence and are not even staying with their families.
07:58Like they are staying away from their families, which are very far away in their state.
08:03And still there is so much of like lack of choice and to make your choice, which is a personal
08:13choice, is such a big problem.
08:16So I was thinking a lot about like Western ideas of feminism that we learn about, you know, financial freedom
08:22will get you everywhere.
08:23Yes, it's great to have financial freedom.
08:25But in countries like mine, there needs to be a larger change to have true freedom of choice, to be
08:33able to live the life you want to live.
08:35So this was the kind of frustration that I had and I wanted to talk about in the film that
08:42it's personal decisions are hardly one's own.
08:46And speaking about that, the Pope, two days ago, said that abortion is murder and again, again, yeah.
08:58And in Italy, we have a huge movement at once, which is pro-life.
09:03And in America, they are trying to really set down abortion law.
09:09So you are speaking about choice, why everybody is trying to, again, take us and take choices from us.
09:19Why women's body is still a political argument?
09:25I think when women are, can be a big threat to the society, the way it is designed right now,
09:35it can be if women have choice and women are able to make their own decisions, then I think there
09:43are a lot of men in power who are very threatened by this.
09:47And just to keep the status quo, it's easy for them to, you know, completely condition the world the way
09:54that they have.
09:55So, I mean, it's frustrating.
09:59Fortunately, in India, we don't have this issue of abortion because it is still easy for women to get abortions.
10:09It's not a religious thing.
10:11But there are many other issues where this control over the body and, you know, the obsession with having a
10:19male child, for example, is a very big thing.
10:24I love the relationship between these three women because they are friends and they know that thanks to each other,
10:30they can have a better life.
10:33So, how important is it showing us that sorority is fundamental, not just being friends, but helping each other?
10:43Yeah, it's true.
10:45I think as I grow older, I rely a lot on my friends.
10:49And I also feel that, again, like what you were talking about before, our society feels very threatened by female
10:58friendship.
11:01And especially in India, like most of the media that you see, like TV shows and soap operas, that the
11:08women are horrible to each other for some reason.
11:10You know, like mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, they're like, oh, shown to be like, oh, horrible.
11:15And, you know, this kind of thing because of this and it's like this internalized patriarchy where we are made
11:23to believe that we can't be friends.
11:24At least in my culture, it's very much like pushed down everybody's throat in the media.
11:32So, it's not good, this method, I feel.
11:37And there is a lot, a lot can come from us just being friends with each other.
11:42Also, in India, we have many different identities.
11:46It's not gender alone.
11:48Like, gender might be common between us, but like color, caste, religion, access to resources is so different between women
12:00language that like to form a unity becomes not always so easy.
12:06So, in this film, I wanted to have women who speak different languages, come from different socioeconomic backgrounds and still
12:13can be friends.
12:15That was my kind of hope.
12:18I think it's Prava that says to Anu, do you ever think about the future?
12:28And Anu says, I think that the future is here right now, but I'm not ready for it.
12:35Do you believe that women finally have the possibility to think about the future as they want it to be?
12:43Or do we still have to do so much work?
12:49Yeah, I think so.
12:50We have to do so much work.
12:52Okay.
12:54I think because we, as women can never get complacent, like we've seen now with the things that are being
13:02overturned after so many years of feminism.
13:05If you see like in America also with the whole Roe versus Wade overturned that happened, you think that, okay,
13:12we're moving forward.
13:13And then something happens, which takes us two steps back.
13:17And I don't know, for me, it's really frustrating.
13:21All those years of feminist history.
13:23And then we come back to these points.
13:26It's, but again, I feel like if we don't have some kind of hope for the future,
13:32then we don't actively involve in changing it, then we can't actually complain.
13:38So we have to work together constantly.
13:43At least the ones who can, because a lot of times people don't even have the privilege to fight for
13:48their rights.
13:51So, yeah, it's constant work.
13:53Greta Gerwig was the current jury president this year.
13:58And I think that she really loved your movie because it gave to you a great price.
14:04But as you were saying, fighting for women is a tricky thing when you're making cinema and movies,
14:13because she was so criticized for doing Barbie because they say you can't make a feminist movie
14:21talking about a doll which embodies capitalism.
14:26So I want to ask you, do you agree it's impossible to make something useful to the cause through a
14:35big movie?
14:36Maybe only Art House Cinema can do it or we can delay some messages even through a successful movie?
14:44No, the aim should be to do it through successful movies.
14:48That is the way I think.
14:49I agree with you.
14:49The more it reaches out to people, you know, Art House Cinema, how many people are going to watch?
14:55The more it reaches out, the more people, if the film has more codes that people identify with,
15:02then I think that really helps to actually make people have conversations that make them uncomfortable in their living rooms.
15:09If this movie plays on the television and the whole family watches it,
15:13and then they need to have a discussion, I would ideally want to be doing this too.
15:19Did you enjoy Barbie?
15:21Yeah, I liked it, yes.
15:24And did you speak with Greta Gerwig?
15:27What did you say to her or her say to you?
15:32We actually got a very short time to speak.
15:36And so it was not a very rich conversation.
15:42She was just very kind and super supportive of the film.
15:47And I think that it touched her.
15:49So I was happy about that.
15:53And again, going back to the city and the shore, I love how you switch colors from the first part
16:01of the movie and the second one.
16:03In the first part, everything is gray, is dark.
16:06And in the second one, colors are bright.
16:09And I had the sensation of a cleaner air.
16:14I don't know.
16:15Yeah, I was really watching the second part.
16:18So I want to know how did you work on the colors of the first part and the second part?
16:23And how important was to you this going on the beach?
16:28What does the beach mean to you?
16:32I wanted to have two seasons in the film and a passage of time between the two.
16:37And where I live in the western coast of India, there are no seasons.
16:42It is hot all the time.
16:44And we have four months of the monsoon season, which is four months of tropical rain.
16:52So because I wanted to have this feeling of the time change, I wanted to have Mumbai in the monsoon
16:58season.
16:58And Mumbai in the monsoon season is a very particular time because it's always this blue-gray feeling.
17:04And it rains constantly.
17:08But it's sometimes very hot-feeling rain.
17:11Like, you feel sticky and, like, really tropical weather.
17:17So I felt that for the first part of the script, having this feeling of being kind of stuck with
17:25this rain made the sense in the meso scene.
17:29Like, it added something to the script without having to say anything in a dialogue.
17:33So I like this setting.
17:37And it's very blue in Mumbai in the rains.
17:40Also, like, the city gets covered with the blue plastic sheets.
17:44Everybody puts them up in their house because there's so much rain.
17:47You need to cover all your terraces and balconies with this blue sheet.
17:52So it's a very Bombay color in the rains.
17:55And in the second part, I wanted to have more red and yellow and green.
17:59Because the place that they go to is a region called Ratnagiri, which is in the south of Mumbai.
18:05And it's known very much for its landscape that has red soil that comes from a particular rock, the laterite
18:13rock.
18:13So all the houses are made with this red soil.
18:15And there's a lot of red color and bright sunlight.
18:21So I felt that, again, the second part of the film with the script, it was this feeling of light
18:26that I thought went well with the feelings of the characters.
18:30I love the moment in which the husband, who's missing from ages, sends the rice boiler.
18:42Yes.
18:42The rice boiler is from Germany.
18:47That made me laugh so hard because we two, when something is good, we say it's from Germany.
18:54Yes, exactly.
18:57Yes.
18:58And I want to know, what does it mean, the rice boiler?
19:04It's a way to say goodbye to her.
19:08And what does it say about the relationship with these men and the women?
19:13Can you explain something about that?
19:16So the rice cooker, we eat a lot of rice in India.
19:20And the rice cooker is like a kind of luxury.
19:25So when you rise up in the middle class, you will think, OK, maybe I should get this thing to
19:30cook for my family.
19:32So it's always like the woman, the family woman's aspiration to have a kitchen appliance like this.
19:40So I thought it was a good kind of blend of capitalism and patriarchal values of the family mixed together
19:48into a kitchen appliance.
19:51And I always find it very fascinating how kitchen appliances are advertised, you know, with these ads, which are like,
19:57can change your life.
19:59And it's so sexy and, you know, with the little lights and it's going round and round and it looks
20:04so good and you have to get one.
20:07So and also I think as I grow older, I really like kitchen appliances and I feel like why?
20:12So I wanted to put all this into it's so funny, like the kitchen appliance thing.
20:21So I felt that it it's it was a good way to kind of talk about many things just through
20:26this very mundane, like boring rice cooker.
20:30But it's also kind of sexy.
20:33And why European men prefer to spend a lot of money rather than talk to other people?
20:41He could have said, yes, I mean, another life here.
20:45Goodbye.
20:46Why?
20:47Yeah, why they don't talk?
20:51Yeah, this is if he could have talked, then the film would be a very different film.
20:58Yeah, so I think there's never really been a good.
21:01But, you know, it would be.
21:04I think also like when we talk about patriarchy, sometimes I like to feel say also that sometimes even men
21:12become a victim to certain codes of our civilization, which even make them not like internalize the system so much
21:23that they also can't see out of it,
21:24which is why I wanted to make the other men in the film, like the boyfriend, kind of some empathy
21:31towards them as well.
21:32So like they might be flawed characters, but, you know, to not have this system would benefit everybody.
21:42So that was my kind of more positive way of looking at things.
21:48Okay, okay.
21:49I agree.
21:49Thank you so much for your time.
21:51Thank you so much.
21:52Thank you.
21:53Thank you.
22:14Thank you.
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