EXCLUSIVE! Chhaya Kadam on Cannes 2024 win: ‘You need to be talented, NOT just beautiful | Payal Kapadia’s 'All We Imagine as Light'

Change is the only thing constant according to Chhaya Kadam. When cinema started changing with the help of the digital platform actors started doing stories on common people who we meet in our day to day life. “When we started telling stories of the common public everything changed for good- the narratives changed, the artists changed and the audience also evolved,” says Chhaya.

There was a time when we saw movies made around heroes and heroines. And when the filmmakers wanted a hero, they expected him to be good looking and the heroine had to be all the more good-looking. Says Chhaya , “It didn’t matter whether they knew how to act or not. Just their screen presence was important. Then those films needed a villain too and all movies then needed some fighting. Then the hero will give one fight and all villains will fall here and there. But now we should understand that audiences have changed. They have way more exposure than the audiences of yester-years. They want to see themselves in the characters that are shown on screen.”

Chhaya believes that it’s a great time for the craftsmen of today. Because once the scene was such that to be in the film industry you had to be beautiful, that was in fact the first requirement.  And most importantly, an actress had to be fair. “Now the first requirement is talent. And I would say OTT had a huge role to play in this change. The audiences understand the differences between fake and real.”

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Now the responsibilities on the shoulders of the craftsmen are also huge. It’s not like whatever we do, the audiences are going to accept us. Chhaya will soon be seen in JioCinema’s Blackout. “Then I have Snowflower coming out soon which was shot in Siberia.”

On her red carpet experience at the Cannes Film Festival, where the team of ‘All We Imagine as Light’ danced instead of walking and made history by winning the best film and our hearts too, Chaaya was slightly skeptical as to whether she will fit into the crowd or not.

“I had the fear of the red carpet and then wearing those elaborate gowns and walking on them, I had tension at the back of my mind. But when you take your film to Cannes, it’s a completely different experience and that gives you confidence. And you are sure that you have come here to show your film, not just walk on the red carpet.”

And when your film All We Imagine as Light which is aapni mitti ki kahani and when that gets accepted and loved in a foreign land it is a surreal experience. “And when All We Imagine as Light got an eight-minute standing ovation at Cannes, that was the best time in my entire life as an artist,” she adds.