Pallavi Joshi: We got to stop catering to the NRI audience

Actor-producer Pallavi Joshi was recently nominated by the Information and Broadcasting Government Of India as a member of Film and Television Institute Of India Society (FTII). While the development had been in the offing for a while, Joshi was still not sure about it. She shares, “I was shooting in Landsdowne with horrible network. The first time I got to know about it was through a newspaper the next day.”
Under her new role, Joshi, along with her fellow committee members aims to create more space and opportunities for creativity to flow freely. She insists FTII graduates have raised the bar high in Indian cinema, yet she acknowledges the decrease in their relevance and value in the industry. “The focus mainly nowadays has been on ‘aapsi bhaichara’. People leave their cities and come to institutions like NSD and FTII in pursuit of excellence and spend time honing their craft. All they need is someone to give them a platform, but the producers have kind of shifted away from brilliance. If we can somehow bring it back and create more opportunities where they cannot be ignored, it will take them to another level.”
When asked where the industry is lacking in creating that space and what they can do more, the 54-year-old has some points to make. She says, “Firstly, we need to start telling Indian stories. In the decade of the 90s and the 2000s, we were only catering to the NRI audience. That’s got to stop somewhere. We are Indians and we need to tell Indian stories, which are rooted in India, made in India, have Indian cultural sentiments and Indian emotions. We need to begin there and for that, we need to do the castings accordingly.”
Joshi adds that she is very impressed by some of the OTT shows that are rooted in the Indian ecosystem. “And then you see films like Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) and Badhaai Ho (2018). These are the films that leave you with a chuckle and touch your heart. These are the kind of films that I think should be made. Once we start getting out of that westernised mindset, which we have always fallen prey to, we will start looking at Indian films and technicians with more respect,” she insists.
The actor-producer’s nomination interestingly comes on the second anniversary of The Kashmir Files. The film became a mammoth success and got Joshi her third National Award. Prior to that, the actor and her husband, filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri achieved success with The Tashkent Files too. When asked if the successes makes them feel more responsible, Joshi iterates, “We felt responsible; hence we made these films. The first film was about Right to Truth, the second was Right to Justice and now The Delhi Files is about Right to Life. The true responsibility lies in being factually correct, well-researched and presenting the truth to people. This is the movement that we have started; we just hope we are able to walk down that path because it’s a very difficult path to walk on.”