The actress plays snoopy mum to a closeted lesbian in her international project, Signature Move
Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 24, 2016)

After playing Sonam Kapoor’s mother in the Neerja Bhanot biopic, actress-activist Shabana Azmi will be seen in 8 Mile actor Michael Shannon’s American production, Signature Move, which is being directed by filmmaker Jennifer Reeder. The actress told Mirror, “I play a mother who is addicted to TV. After her husband dies, she moves in with her daughter in Chicago and starts keeping a close tab on her life, discovering that she is a lesbian and a Lucha Libre (professional wrestling) wrestler. It’s a fun film.”

The 66-year-old actress also features in the screen retelling of Munshi Premchand’s short story, Idgah, for which she shot earlier this year in Kashmir. The film is currently playing in the Recommends section of the ongoing NFDC Film Bazaar in Goa.

“I went to Kashmir before shooting commenced to get a feel of the place. I play a woman from the hills so my face had to be tanned in a particular way to make it look credible. We shot there in June when it was teeming with tourists. It was good to be back in the Valley — we used to shoot there so often back in the day — but the place was ravaged by protests in the wake of Burhan Wani’s death and a curfew was imposed just three days after we wrapped up our film. We had shot in Gulmarg near an army cantonment because the era in which the story is set is not specified,” Shabana said.

Idgah, which centres on eight-year-old Hamid and the close bond between him and his grandmother, also required her to befriend her debutant co-star, Yohan, director Piyush Panjwani’s nephew, who had never faced the camera before. “He plays Hamid while I’m his grandmother. I invited him to my house and we went to watch The Jungle Book together. I told him he had to speak to me in Hindi as I don’t know English. One day he caught me speaking in English and protested so I told him I was just learning the language. We developed a comfortable relationship which is also crucial to the story,” Shabana recounted, adding that she was initially apprehensive about how a short story could be turned into a feature-length film. “I did a look test, posted it on Twitter and got great feedback. That convinced me to do this film,” she informed.

When asked if collaboration with step-kids, Farhan and Zoya Akhtar, is a possibility in the near future, the actress guffawed, saying that the filmmaker siblings are only interested in her culinary skills. “All they want to know is what I’m cooking for them. And it has to be kebabs and biryani every single time. Once, I served them Thai food and they screamed! They’re still complaining about it after all these years. We keep track of each other’s work but I think it’d be easier for me to convince Steven Spielberg to cast me in a movie than my own children.”

While the world is now hopping on the web content bandwagon, Shabana points out that she featured in a film that was released online almost ten years ago. “I did Waterborne at a time when people wondered why I’d do something like that but I thought the concept was really interesting. Everyone is realising now that the digital platform is making it possible for all kinds of films to be made,” she reasoned.