Titas Chowdhury (HINDUSTAN TIMES; March 14, 2020)

For Kirti Kulhari, stories that are rooted in reality, and based on real life events strike a deeper chord more than fictional narratives. Last year, the actor featured in Uri: The Surgical Strike, a film based on India’s surgical strike against Pakistan, and Mission Mangal based on India’s first interplanetary expedition. She believes it’s easier to connect with the audience with a story that is inspired from a true event. “I personally get very attracted to films and series that are based on true life events. As an actor, I’ve realised that reality is stranger than fiction and I think that is what fascinates me. Reality is actually so much stranger than whatever one can imagine, think or create in terms of fiction and I love that aspect,” she explains.

Kulhari says that as an actor, working in a film based on real events helps her connect to her character better. “When you know it has happened for real, it inspires you so much more because a part of you believes that something like this is possible and it’s not a figment of someone’s imagination. It makes it more relatable. It makes you believe that the human spirit is strong and it can do and create so much if all energies are in the right direction,” she says stressing on the increasing number of films being made on real stories.

The Indu Sarkar (2017) actor says that doing such films has never been a conscious decision. “For the actor in me, a story is a story, but I do get biased towards real life stories. I’ve never thought of creating a balance between fact and fiction while working in such films. There’s nothing very fictional about telling human stories. (Even in a fiction), the characters that you play are around you and the things that happen to them have happened to different people at different points of time,” Kulhari says.