When filmmaker Arati Kadav was filling out the form for the BAFTA Breakthrough India program, she had an intuition that she would secure a spot in the Breakthrough India Participants for 2022. So when she received the news that she was one of the 10 emerging Indian talents across the Indian film, gaming, and television industries chosen for the prestigious program by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, she was on cloud nine.
“I had written the application with a lot of honesty and put in a lot of effort in the application. But you don’t want to keep your hopes high,” she tells, in a candid chat with News18. “But this time, I was feeling like I will get it, I had a very strong feeling about it,” she adds.
The jury choosing the BAFTA Breakthrough India candidates this year included AR Rahman, Anupam Kher, Guneet Monga, Ratna Pathak Shah, Shonali Bose and Siddharth Roy Kapur. Arati was selected for her sci-fi movie Cargo, which starred Vikrant Massey and Shweta Tripathi in the lead. The film debuted on Netlfix in 2020 and was showered with praises. The film, at the time of its digital release, was lauded for giving an Indian spin to the genre.
The year-long program will provide ample opportunities for those selected. These include voting membership of BAFTA for a year, access to BAFTA events and screenings, and support in industry introductions and career development opportunities. Given this, we asked Arati if she is looking forward to crossing paths with some of the biggest sci-fi filmmakers, including Ridley Scott.
The excited director replied, “I would love to work with all of them because I am a huge fan of Ridley Scott. In fact, Ridley Scott’s production designer, I met him before making Cargo and he sent me a very lovely best of luck video message also and I have referenced their work. I have devoured their work, I am their biggest fan here.”
“The person who designed the spaceship for Alien, he was attending a film bazaar in Goa for a conference. Someone told me that the guy who designed the Alien spaceship is here. I wanted to go to meet but couldn’t. Instead, I got a chance to speak to them for a few minutes and I recorded that conversation. They had such lovely ideas for designing the spaceship. The interaction contributed to Cargo,” Arati added.
“I am actually a big, big fan of Dr Who. There is a highway space jam episode of Dr. Who that inspired Cargo and from that, I picked up Indian mythology so so many things came together, you don’t even know how a story idea comes to you,” she confessed.
With the movie paving the way to unique Indianised sci-fi movies, Arati believes that Indian cinema has finally reached a space where the bottleneck around release platforms has reduced — owing to the rise in digital releases — and there is scope to explore different kinds of content. However, she also notes that with freedom comes responsibility. “We have to be responsible for it because it is a double edge sword. Once such platforms are available, people are also exposed to a lot of international storytelling. So we cannot short-change our craft. So we have to keep improving our art and craft. But at the same time, it is a great time where we can make different kinds of stories with conviction, honesty, and hope that it finds an audience,” she says.
While we look forward to seeing Arati explore the sci-fi genre, the director is taking a diversion and is diving into a remake of a Malayalam movie next. A few weeks ago, it was announced that she would be helming the Hindi remake of The Great Indian Kitchen. Speaking about the film, Arati said, “I had seen the original Malayalam film and I was a huge fan of the film. When the film came to me, my first reaction was why do you want to adapt a perfect film. How do you take a perfect film and make it better? I met the producers, Herman Baweja, I met Sanya Malhotra who was very keen to translate this story and make it pan India and I started thinking about the film. There were so many things that the film talks about that is the reality of a lot of women in India.”
“I thought why not tell the story with the same sensitivity but make it pan India. If the film brings a change in the lives of even like 100 families, I really (would be happy). I want people to watch the film and come back and realise how we have been so cruel to our mothers all our lives,” she added.
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