Anjali Patil on Sailesh Rathnakumar’s ‘Selvi’: ‘Women characters have more space in regional cinema’

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Actor-producer Anjali Patil at the 31st Busan International Film Festival. | Photo Credit: Stephanie Cornfield

When Anjali Patil walked in at the 31st Busan International Film Festival, people recalled her as the actress from With You, Without You (2012), Prasanna Vithanage’s Sri Lankan film that had premiered there too. This week, she was both the titular actor and producer of her independent Tamil film, Selvi , on the invisible lives of migrant home-care nurses. Directed by debutant Sailesh Rathnakumar, Selvi premiered in the Vision-Asia section and picked up two awards: Hylife Vision Award and the Taipei Film Commission Award.

In such Hindi films as Newton (2017), Mere Pyare Prime Minister (2018) and Kaun Pravin Tambe? (2022), one has seen Patil helm both seemingly simple to complex and layered characters with an unhurried ease and gravitas. She’s influenced by German contemporary dancer Pina Bausch, the mother of modern dance.

Patil’s Selvi takes on the weight of responsibility — her own, her family’s, even of her roommates. Thinking of herself, or stealing moments to sleep, is a luxury denied to her. “Selvi is a really complex character, unseen, average and mundane, something I get pulled towards. I wanted to play her,” says Patil, who has previously acted in Tamil films such as Pa. Ranjith’s and Rajinikanth’s Kaala (2018) and the psychological thriller Kuthiraivaal (2021).

Anjali Patil plays the titular Selvi in the Tamil independent film produced by her company Anahat Films.

Talking about his sound-driven film, with the audio helmed by Anand Krishnamoorthi ( Ponniyin Selvan I & II ), Rathnakumar, a writer-producer at Patil’s Anahat Films, says, “ Selvi bridges the gap between arthouse and commercial.” Selvi received the Red Sea Fund (for post-production) and was a Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) Work-in-Progress project, which gave it the Asian film market exposure.

The story comes from Rathnakumar’s cinematographer Bargav Sridhar who was introduced to the home-care industry when his mother suffered a lung ailment during COVID-19. “A lot of home-care nurses come from small towns (Nagercoil, Tirunelveli, etc.). When they enter the homes, all they bring is care. We don’t see the weight of their emotional burden and we felt compelled to tell this story,” says Rathnakumar, a Prague Film School alumnus who has assisted veteran editor B. Lenin on sound and music in films.

Debutant director Sailesh Rathnakumar at Busan International Film Festival. | Photo Credit: Stephanie Cornfield

In Selvi, there is an uncanny parallel of the migrant nurses’ story to Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix winner All We Imagine As Light (2024).

Sailesh Rathnakumar: We didn’t have the intention of capitalising on what was happening in cinema at the time. We had already written Selvi before Payal’s film released. When we watched another film exploring a similar world, we felt that the premise we were handling (home-care nurses) and what we were communicating through Selvi was very different.