Interview | Kiran Rao on ‘Laapataa Ladies’, her comeback movie as a director

Interview with filmmaker Kiran Rao, whose latest movie Laapataa Ladies, is a compulsive comedy that addresses weighty social issues

In Kiran Rao’s latest directorial venture Laapataa Ladies, a slip-up sets many things right. Two newly-wed brides accidentally get separated from their respective families during a train journey to their husbands’ homes.

Over the next few days, as everybody goes berserk looking for them, one bride discovers a world that had been cordoned off from her, while the other challenges and shakes the patriarchy around her. It is a compulsive comedy that deftly finds humour in the direst situations, even as it addresses weighty social issues.

Releasing on March 1, Laapataa Ladies, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, is Rao’s second feature film, after 2010’s Dhobi Ghat. The film is based on Biplab Goswami’s prize-winning screenplay, Two Brides, and was brought to her attention by her former husband, actor-producer Aamir Khan. While the screenplay is darker in tone, Rao and her writing partners, Sneha Desai and Divyanidhi Sharma, have infused humour and hope.

In fact, Rao, whose personal favourites when it comes to comedies are Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and the Monty Python series, went ahead and created her own state, Nirmal Pradesh, to aid the proceedings in Laapataa Ladies. Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta, Ravi Kishan and Chhaya Kadam play the protagonists in the film, which was shot in rural Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Edited excerpts from an interview:

The label might be because I have not helmed any film in the last 10-12 years. Maybe, it is also symptomatic of how women’s work is often overlooked because it is not always in the foreground.

Being a mother took up a major chunk of my creative mind in the last decade. I tried very hard to have a child, and when Azad came into my life, I knew I wanted to spend much of my time with him. Having said that, I have also been a part of a lot of projects. We, at Aamir Khan Productions, produced five or six films, and I was also a part of the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. But, indeed, now I am returning to the industry as a filmmaker, and I am excited to have something of my own to show people.

I have lived all my life in a city, and I veer towards films set in that milieu. But I think all of us in India must have had an experience of either passing through or living in a village, or might at least have extended family in the countryside. When Aamir narrated Two Brides to me, my first thought was that while the story is set in a village, it has very universal issues at its core.