Shabana Azmi's 50-year journey as an actor continues to be celebrated all over the world. Now it is at the Nantes Film Festival in France.
Her work has consistently found favour in France, where retrospectives of her films have featured at the George Pompidou Centre, Cinematheque, and earlier at the Nantes festival of three continents where Godmother was the opening night film in 1997. In 1989, at the Biennale of Human Rights in France, she was chosen as one among sixteen women, including Mother Teresa, Rigoberta Menchu, and Albertina Sisulu, who were honoured by President Mitterand for her human rights work for slum dwellers and women’s rights activists and for using cinema as a medium of social change.
At the prestigious Nantes Film Festival, a major cultural event, Shabana will be honored with a retrospective of her films that include Ankur, Mandi, Arth, and Masoom, celebrating her glorious 50-year career in Hindi cinema.
Speaking to Zoom, just before she flew off to France, Shabana said, “I am becoming increasingly embarrassed by this torrent of praise. To hear people praise you so much is very flattering but also sobering. There is so much more I want to do, so many roles, and so many other activities that remain unattended. At the same time, I am very grateful for all the attention. I feel I’ve just begun.”
So here is to another 50 years of Shabana.