Tamil film Selvi, starring and produced by National Award-winning actor Anjali Patil, will have its world premiere in the Vision-Asia section of the 31st Busan International Film Festival in October. “We really knew that we want to make a film which is Indian, which is Tamil, which is authentic in its landscape and resonates globally,” Patil tells us. “We are all somehow striving to take Indian stories made with international standards. We are all striving to take them on a higher scale.” She adds that the larger aim is to see such stories travel globally while eventually returning to their “rightful audience” in India.
The film follows a migrant home-care nurse and explores the themes of care, migration, friendship, guilt and exhaustion, which she believes have global resonance.
For the 38-year-old, Selvi reflects the expansion of Indian cinema’s global identity. “10-15 years ago, India’s cinema identity was only limited to Bollywood,” she says, crediting independent filmmakers for breaking that ceiling. “There was a wave of filmmakers and films which kind of put independent films on the map. And that’s been getting pushed, the ceiling is getting broken every single year.”
While Selvi marks another international outing for Anjali, the actor is no stranger to taking Indian stories to global platforms. Her film Baksho Bondi was selected for the Berlin International Film Festival in 2025, while The Moogai premiered in the Midnight section at Sundance in 2024.
And the shift has also blurred the line between commerce and art in cinema: “We cannot really say that this is commercial and this is something very arthouse anymore,” she says, adding, “Audience wants to see it because audience is very, very intelligent. They have always been very intelligent. It’s just a matter of giving it to them.”
{{/usCountry}}And the shift has also blurred the line between commerce and art in cinema: “We cannot really say that this is commercial and this is something very arthouse anymore,” she says, adding, “Audience wants to see it because audience is very, very intelligent. They have always been very intelligent. It’s just a matter of giving it to them.”
{{/usCountry}}For Anjali, the evolution of Indian cinema is not simply about Indian films getting recognition at international festivals. “I feel it is even going a step further. It’s not just, you know, Indian films getting recognition in the festivals. I think our journey is upstream in both ways,” she says. She believes filmmakers are now able to remain rooted in their own cultures while creating cinema that can travel globally. “We have somehow taken up this Shivdhanush to go both ways,” she says.
Anjali is also taking that expansive approach to her own career, as she will soon be making her directorial debut with the science-fiction project Average Girl. Having worked across Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, English and Sri Lankan projects, Anjali says working across languages has been a natural extension of her artistic journey. “I just love it. I love things which have more variety, which have more dimension,” she ends.