Kani Kusruti, Chhaya Kadam and Divya Prabha are working women in Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, who find tenderness in each other’s company and the frenetic Mumbai city. The Malayalam-Hindi language feature is the first Indian film by a female director to compete for the main competition award at Cannes. This isn’t just a phenomenal feat for our cinema — an Indian film is a Palme d’Or contender for the first time in 30 years — but also an essential recognition for the actresses, who have been silently carving a space for themselves with a rich oeuvre of strong female parts.
While these actresses have all led films before — Kusruti won a Kerala State Film Award for her performance as a wearied, wronged woman in Biriyaani (2020), Kadam, the Maharashtra State Film Award for her role as a nude model in Marathi film Nude (2018), while Prabha’s turn as Reshmi in Ariyippu received festival nods — they have mostly been seen in small parts, significant enough to leave a line of complex characters behind them.
In Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies (2023), Manju (Chhaya Kadam) is the first woman Phool meets after she’s lost. But she isn’t the warm, comforting presence Phool might’ve expected in this maternal figure. Before giving her some tea and bread to fill the stomach, Manju gives Phool a scathing speech on how she’s been frauded into believing she’s a “respectable woman.” Manju’s minute-long dialogue on the “big fraud” perhaps reveals the ugliness of patriarchy far better than any other film on the issue. Kadam brings a brilliant effervescence to Manju, who is most comfortable in her own company, but eventually learns, along with Phool, the joy of female friendship.
Chhaya Kadam providing shelter to other women can be a genre in itself. Not unlike Manju, in the Marathi film Nude, she takes in her niece, who has escaped abuse from her husband. Kadam is Chandrakka, who models nude for students of Sir JJ School of Arts in Mumbai. “In this profession, our bodies aren’t sex objects…why should I feel ashamed?” she asks, her eyes brimming with pain and pride. Although the story is largely Yamuna’s, Chandrakka manages to make a lasting impression.
“I might look delicate, but I’m a no-nonsense woman. I’ve beaten men to a pulp,” Kadam's Suman akka tells Parshya in Nagraj Manjule’s Sairat (2016), after having saved him and his girlfriend Archi from goons and homelessness. She is a small pitstop in this couple’s tragic dalliance with romance, but without Suman, it’s hard to imagine Sairat taking the way it did. Her face fills up with delight when she sees these kids come into their own as a family, despite her own failure with romance.
A woman comes through for another in Sarjun KM’s moving short film Maa. But in this case, it is Kani Kusruti’s young mother, who holds her preteen daughter’s hands through her abortion. When her daughter Ammu is sick, the first place Sathya’s mind goes to is her husband. “Unga appaku yaaru badhil solluva? Who will answer your father?” she chides her. We realise the depth of this dialogue quite later when she learns Ammu is pregnant. Kusruti’s eyes depict the initial stages of the shame and disgust a mother feels, shortly before being overcome by guilt and unconditional love for her daughter. The actress doesn’t just give a portrait of a mother coming to terms with a life-changing event, but also an unyielding, kind presence who is there for a fellow woman.
When we see Khadija for the first time in Sajin Baabu’s Biriyaani, she is having mechanical sex with her husband. Moments later, when she’s shamed for pleasuring herself, she has the perfect response. “Call your circumcisor, he can cut it (clitoris).” Even if the film could be read as problematic for its depiction of an already oppressed community, Kani shines as Khadija, a woman who finds herself in the midst of patriarchy and religious discrimination in Kerala. A divorce and unfortunate deaths in the family force Khadija to finally live for herself.
The actress continued to attract roles of such resilience, no matter how small, with films like Memories of a Machine (2016), a take on the moral dilemmas of a woman’s early sexual encounter, and the rebellious coming-of-age story of a daughter and a protective mother in Girls Will Be Girls (2024). Even in a tiny corner in the labyrinthine Netflix series Killer Soup (2024), Kani left her stylistic stamp. Kirtima is Prabhu’s lovestruck secretary, who struggles to let go of her love for the married man. She is shamed and ignored, but she remains silent. But don’t take her for a woman without a voice. Harm her physically, and a Kalari master comes out with a rage. “Did you take me to be a weak woman?” Kirtima asks Swathi, who is stunned by her return from the “dead”. Even if it doesn’t last too long.
In both Ariyippu and Family (2023), Divya Prabha has an important decision to make. Should she speak up and question a man’s intention in a family that is blind to men’s atrocities (Don Palathara’s Family, a familial portrait of a Syrian Christian community in Kerala) or should she be true to herself and not sell her soul in exchange of a dead woman’s justice (Mahesh Narayanan’s Ariyippu)? Divya is stunning in scenes of confusion — as an invisible daughter-in-law in Family and a woman forced to be silent about an assault in Ariyippu. And she is often pressured to do the “right thing” sometimes just because she is a woman. “You should consider the people who will be affected by your statement, especially when you’re a woman,” a heartbroken Rani is told in Family.
And then there is of course Kanchan Kombdi in Madgaon Express (2024), with which Kadam comes a full circle. With Kombdi, the badass leader of a women-only cartel in Goa, the actress not only gets to channel her main-character energy but gives us a depiction of a local cartel that’s not filled with testosterone and idiocy. Kombdi is wronged by a man, but she turns that into her origin story — turning the tables on the gender dynamics with such tropes.
What is it about these women that draws them to such quiet yet forceful parts on screen? Whatever it may be, it is only fitting that these women get to share screen for the first time ever on a film that warrants celebration and importance.