3 weeks Ago
Twenty five years into the Hindi film industry, Dia Mirza Rekhi is still finding firsts to put next to her credit. Recently, the actor had an unusual feat to her name as her 2019 web series Kaafir , got re-released in the form of a movie. Talking about it, Dia Mirza says, “It's being shown in a format that is possibly more convenient for people as a film is a shorter format.
It also gives the story an opportunity to reach out to a whole new set of people. Interestingly, it was first initially written as a feature film. For many years Sidharth Malhotra and Sapna tried to make it, but it wasn't happening.
Eventually, it got made into a series. With the movie, it feels like a full circle for it. Dia, who is mother to three-year-old Avyaan Azaad Rekhi, played a mother in Kaafir, trying to build a better life for her daughter.
In this year’s Naadaniyan too, she played a doting mother to Ibrahim Ali Khan. Ask her how the choices in work have changed for her after embracing motherhood in real life, and she says, “Every single job I have done in the last five years leading to my son’s birth and the years after his birth, are projects that I would want him to watch. A big part of my priority in choosing stories is the thought, ‘Would I want my children to watch this? What will they gain from it?’” While Dia is glad that factors like age, marital and maternal status of women, which used to define their longevity in cinema, are no more effecting work, she does admit to facing the impact of it.
“I was beginning to believe that work had dried up for me because of my age. It's a pattern; it happens with most women in cinema that post the age of 35 till 48, work really disappears, and then, post 47, you start getting offered mother’s and sister’s roles. But the advent of OTT has given voice to women.
Shefali Shah in Delhi Crime has been an example of it, and I count Kaafir as one of those too,” Dia says. While she is happy about the progress on the above fronts, she laments a new factor that has come into play—social media following. “Now there is a whole new nonsense that's underway.
A lot of casting is being done based on an individuals' popularity on social media, which is unfair. Some extremely stupendous talent may not be willing to put out their voice on social media but that should not mean that they don't qualify for a part. This is a new culture happening globally too and it's terrible,” the actor ends.
