Filmy foray

She was acting in a school play when filmmaker Suhaib Ilyasi spotted 16-year-old Shrishti Gautam and decided to cast her in his debut film, 498 A — The Wedding Gift.

She was acting in a school play when filmmaker Suhaib Ilyasi spotted 16-year-old Shrishti Gautam and decided to cast her in his debut film, 498 A — The Wedding Gift.

Shrishti-Gautam

“I was just having fun on stage. I didn’t know that I was being auditioned. A day after the play, Aalia (Ilyasi’s daughter) came to me in school and said that her dad wants to cast me in a film and would like to know my phone number. When he called my mom, she said, ‘Are you sure you have the right girl?’” laughs Shrishti, a student of Sanskriti school.

“It was a very heavy script so I wasn’t sure about doing it, but Suhaib sir made me very comfortable. He told me, ‘Is film mein aisa kucch nahi hai jo kar ke tumhe ajeeb lagega,’” she recalls. “It was quite challenging because sometimes we shot 18 hours on the set,” she adds.