Truffaut, Chaplin, and Wong Kar-wai… the three directors rank high for actor-filmmaker Konkona Sen Sharma who says her mother would not let her watch too many Hindi films and she therefore had great exposure to world cinema.
Konkona, the daughter of filmmaker Aparna Sen and writer Mukul Sharma, has distilled her most favourite cinema experiences in a list of seven films she has curated for the streaming platform MUBI.
The films – Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (1921), Carla Simon’s Summer 1993 (2017), Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997), Lynne Ramsay’s We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011), Lars von Trier’s The Idiots, (1998) and the actor’s childhood favourites, Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (1962) and The 400 Blows (1959) – became available on MUBI under the ‘Hand-Picked By Konkona Sen Sharma’ section from Thursday.
“When we see something that touches us… if it’s an experience that has moved us, we always want to share it with loved ones,” Konkona told PTI.
“I feel like that is almost the essence of any kind of art form or expression, which is really to share the feeling of what it’s to be a human being, what it is to be alive and making sense of life. I love to get all these different perspectives of different directors. I grew up watching a lot of these films,” she added.
The actress is known for her varied roles, including Mr and Mrs Iyer, Lipstick Under My Burkha, Omkara, and Wake Up Sid.
She also earned plaudits as a director with A Death in the Gunj and The Mirror from Netflix’s Lust Stories.
Discussing her selection, she said, “Some of these films are films which I’ve seen as a kid. I would say Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and The 400 Blows are films that I’ve seen as a child. I used to watch a lot of world cinema. My mom would make sure that we watched all kinds of films from all over the world. My mom didn’t let me watch a lot of Hindi films growing up,” she added.
