Red Sea Film Festival: Kriti Sanon on Playing One of Her ‘Most Layered Characters’ in ‘Tere Ishk Mein’ and Being ‘Glad That Love Stories are Back’

Bollywood star Kriti Sanon was among the star guests at the Red Sea Film Festival on Friday, where she gave an In Conversation at the 5th edition of the Saudi Arabian event.

Shortly after the on-stage talk, the actress — best known for the 2021 hit “Mimi,” for which she won both a National Film Award and the Filmfare Award for best actress — swung by the Variety Lounge presented by Red Sea Film Festival to discuss her most recent roles.

Now in cinemas and already proving to be another hit for Sanon, Aanand L. Rai’s musical “Tere Ishk Mein” is a film she described as an “intense mess of a romance.” But it’s also a project that she proudly asserted offered her “one of her most layered characters,” playing a woman in an abusive relationship.

“What I love about her is that she’s not perfect. She’s not your quintessential, good girl. She’s flawed, as we are as human beings. And she’s extremely raw, she’s vulnerable,” she said, adding that, in Hindi cinema at least, women used to the “damsel in distress, innocent, nice, sweet, shy… and I feel like it was mostly the male gaze on the character.”

But now, she noted, there was more than just a male gaze in the industry.

“There are a lot of women writing characters and making films where the characters are more realistic — they’re real, they’re wrong, they make mistakes,” she said.

Alongside having a more layered and complex character in “Tere Ishk Mein,” Sanon said that that film also heralded the welcome return of romance in the movies.

“I’m really glad that love stories are back. I craved them. It’s my favorite genre,” she noted. “Because I felt like we kind of didn’t know how to make them anymore, that the current generation is scared of love, it’s swiping left, and not really getting into the deep kind of love.”

She added: “But I feel like we all are craving it as well, even in the movies. And so this year has been about love stories.”