Nawazuddin Siddiqui: We are fortunate to have actors like Om Puri, Manoj Bajpayee and Irrfan

For Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the journey to cinema, like it does for so many moviegoers, started in a theatre. And in his case, in a remote village, Budhana, in western UP.Nawaz says that Indian cinema’s global presence has been cracked by independent filmmakers and their films are appreciated in Europe, in France.

It’s a recognition, he feels, that was long overdue and one that keeps him rooted in the kind of cinema he’s always loved from the powerful performances of actors like Naseeruddin Shah in Sparsh (1980) to Irrfan in Lunchbox (2013).

Nawaz says, "These films, performances, and his theatre training shaped me into the actor I became.” In a conversation, Nawaz spoke about the impact films had on him.

'There are so many films I keep going back to. Dev Anand’s Leader, Naseeruddin Shah’s Ijaazat, Om Puri’s Ardh Satya'

“The first film I ever watched in a cinema hall was Jaggu Dada (1975),” he recalls.

“I must have been five or six. (Films at that time didn't release immediately in far-fetched areas.) He is an amazing actor and a person. Hamare yahan toh Shatrughan Sinha bahut hi popular thay western UP mein.”Nawaz says he has always been a cinephile in awe of movies by actors who pushed boundaries. “There are so many films I keep going back to. Dev Anand’s Leader, Naseeruddin Shah’s Ijaazat, Om Puri’s Ardh Satya, Pankaj Kapur’s Ek Doctor Ki Maut.

Ye filmein main baar-baar hazaar baar dekh sakta hoon.”What links them, for him, is not genre or director, but the power of performance. “It’s the actors,” he says. "Inn filmon mein aise actors hain. Hamare country mein aise actors ka hona, ye khushnaseebi hai hum logon ke liye. Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Kamal Haasan, Manoj Bajpayee, Irrfan Khan - they’re great actors. Main aisi hi filmein dekh kar bada hua. These films and my theatre training shaped me into the actor I became.”Nawaz says that while the performances of these actors shaped him, film festivals expanded his sense of what Indian cinema could be.

'Berlin ho ya Cannes ya Venice, itne log aate hain sirf cinema ke liye'

Nawaz says that he has seen the inside of screening rooms from Venice to Berlin, where crowds show up for cinema and not spectacle. “Berlin ho ya Cannes ya Venice, itne log aate hain sirf cinema ke liye. You go there, watch films from around the world, and then you see the ones that went from India, aur tab lagta hai ki Thank God! hamare yahan se bhi itni achhi filmein gayi hain.

Even if they didn’t run in India, even if people here didn’t know about them - they worked globally.

” Be it All We Imagine As Light or Lunchbox - these films went on to become a global phenomenon, he says. At a French film panel in 2022, Michele Plazanet, of France’s National Centre for Cinema, described it as “a hit with French audiences,” jokingly noting that it combined their two favourite things - love and food.

'Indian cinema ko kisi ne crack kiya hai toh independent directors ne'

This year, Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound made it to Cannes. Payal Kapadia was on the Cannes jury. Village Rockstars 2 by Rima Das just picked up the Kim Jiseok Award at Busan last year. Nawaz says, "Indian cinema ko global level pe kisi ne crack kiya hai toh woh independent directors ne pahunchaya hai. Most of our commercial films are preferred by Indian diaspora, Middle East, but in France, Europe, it is our independent films which are more appreciated.

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