Victory for women’s stories

A still from the film

When Manasi Parekh heard that she won the National Award for Best Actress for Kutch Express, her first call was to her mother. "She is the one who always encouraged my work as an artiste since I was a child. Then I called my husband [Parthiv Gohil], who has produced the movie with me; he was crying with me," she smiles.

On August 16, as the National Awards were announced, Kutch Express bagged three gongs. Parekh - who shares the honour with Nithya Menen for Thiruchitrambalam (2022) - says the success tastes sweeter as the movie was shot with great difficulty during the pandemic.

The film revolves around her homemaker character Monghi, who, on learning of her husband's infidelity, empowers herself and finds an ally in her mother-in-law, essayed by Ratna Pathak Shah. "I felt this story about finding yourself had to be told. The DoP [director of photography] is a woman, Dhawalika Singh; we had Niki Joshi Naik as costume designer. So, it was almost an all-women crew, except our director. Ratna ben felt proud that we had so many women working with us. In Gujarati cinema, female narratives are rare; films are mostly male-driven."

It is also the first Gujarati movie that ran in theatres with the Indian Sign Language. She says, "The Chairperson [of Central Board of Film Certification] said it was the kind of film that should be showcased in sign language. We thought, why shouldn't everyone experience cinema?"