Kiran Rao Talks About Queer Representation Onscreen, Says 'There's A Long Way To Go'

Filmmaker Kiran Rao serves as a jury member for the narrative segment of the upcoming edition of the Kashish Pride Film Festival, South Asia's biggest LGBTQ film festival. Talking about the queer representation in Indian cinema, the Laapataa Ladies director said it is heartening to see LGBTQ stories finding space in mainstream filmmaking, even though the progress has been quite slow. She added while the representation of queer people in films and web series has increased but more needs to be done.

Kiran Rao on queer representation 

In a conversation with PTI, Rao said that the representation of gay people in cinema has increased and she is happy about it. The filmmaker said, "There's a long way to go before we can stop having to speak about queer issues with this specifically separate lens... But it's slowly happening, as we can see in many shows on OTT, there's a much greater representation of queer people and a more diverse representation, which is very heartening for filmmakers like me and in general, for us as Indians, because this is something I feel we should all be sensitive to.”

In some ways, cinema is a reflection of society, which needs to evolve with time, she added. “It's wonderful that so much has changed in the last two decades in our country.”

More about Kashish Pride Film Festival 

The 15th edition of the Kashish Pride Film Festival will be held from May 15 to 19 at Liberty Cinema, Alliance Française de Bombay and Cinepolis. Sridhar Rangayan serves as festival director. During the festival, 133 films from 46 countries across categories will be showcased. The line-up also includes 10 films from transgender filmmakers.

Rao said she felt "incredibly lucky" when she was approached to serve as a jury member for the narrative segment of the festival. The other members of the panel are popular actors Sonali Kulkarni and Barun Sobti. She believes festivals like Kashish Pride are important as they create a space where many important issues can be discussed.

"I feel like it's helped the mainstream also in some way get to understand the issues that are faced by the queer community," she added.