Mrs director Arati Kadav on how she interviewed women across north India to bring fresh lived-in experiences, instead of making a straight adaptation of The Great Indian Kitchen
Sanya Malhotra leads Mrs
Adapting an acclaimed film comes with immense responsibility. But there is another way of looking at it. Director Arati Kadav believes it can also be an opportunity to bring more lived-in experiences to the story, thus making it resonate with a wider audience. That’s the approach with which she went into Mrs, an official adaptation of the Malayalam gem, The Great Indian Kitchen (2021). “For me, storytelling has always been about capturing the raw, unfiltered experiences of people,” she starts.
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A still from The Great Indian Kitchen
While the Nimisha Sajayan-led original was set in Kerala, Kadav reimagined her Sanya Malhotra-starrer on the outskirts of Delhi. As the milieu changed, so did the nature of experiences. The director conducted in-depth conversations with homemakers, working women, and young girls to weave their experiences into the script. It helped her bring fresh nuances to the story instead of making a beat-by-beat remake. “I spoke to women balancing dreams and duties, navigating patriarchal norms, and redefining their identities. I wanted to go beyond retelling the original and instead explore the unspoken struggles, and the cultural nuances rooted in this part of the country. Mrs is a lens into lives that are often overshadowed, giving it a fresh and personal flavour,” states Kadav, who previously helmed Cargo (2019).
Arati Kadav
Through the ZEE5 film, which also stars Kanwaljit Singh and Nishant Dahiya, Kadav realised that while women have experiences that are unique to them, certain issues remain uniform. She notes, “The unacknowledged labour, quiet endurance, and balancing act bind women across all sections. I wove those universal threads into the narrative. The film aims to hold up a mirror to these collective truths while being culturally specific.”
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