Pallavi Joshi will appear in a pivotal role as Ma Bharati in Vivek Agnihotri’s upcoming film The Bengal Files, which releases in theatres on September 5. We caught up with the actress at her Mumbai apartment in the thick of a promotional blitz, dressed in a sari with bold typography about justice, courage and equality. Excerpts from the conversation:

On a very artistic level, knowing what the content is, knowing what we have been trying to say through the Files films, it is an extremely proud moment for me right now to know that we have successfully completed the trilogy.

But I don’t understand this – nowhere in the world this kind of pushback happens when you try to show a slice of history. I understand that we live in very unique times, where the entire world is outraging. So maybe, we live in outrageous times and thanks to social media, everything is amplified.

The one big takeaway from this trilogy is that they are feeling heard and acknowledged. For so long, they were invisible people whose pain never found representation. We all have a right to know what happened to our families. The past. After The Kashmir Files, I remember Kashmiri Pandits coming up to me, holding my hands and crying, saying, “Thank you for finally telling our truth.” Even now, Bengalis, especially those who have family histories tied to the Partition, are reaching out to us with similar emotions. That’s why we do this work.

I think everything in India today is political — whether you like it or not. The tragedy is that even history has become politicized. But what we are doing is storytelling. We’re taking documented events, survivor testimonies, and real experiences, and putting them into a cinematic form. If that is labelled political, then so be it. But our intention is very clear. We want to tell the truth of people who were silenced.