Rima Kallingal on winning the best actor award at the Kerala Film Critics Awards, acting in an Anjali Menon film and being a dancer

Rima Kallingal expresses gratitude for her recent successes in acting, dance, and activism in the Malayalam film industry.

Gratitude. Rima Kallingal sums it up with one word when I ask her what she is feeling. Winning the Kerala Film Critics Awards for the Best Actor, praise for her Sree Kanya in the segment Backstage, directed by Anjali Menon, part of the coming of age anthology Yuva Sapno Ka Safar and the astounding response to her latest dance production Nayika, a tribute to Malayalam cinema’s women actors of the past 100 years, Rima says: “I feel a surge of gratitude and happiness as an artist! ” 

We are sitting in her apartment in Panampilly Nagar, Kochi, which wears a dash of whimsy and has dance-related stuff strewn all over. She has just opened the new space for her dance school, Mamangam, which she founded in 2014. It is the material from there, related events and her impending trip to the US (for a month-long series of stage shows), she explains, accompanied by her trademark full-throated laugh.   

“I had forgotten about it when the announcements [Kerala Film Critics Awards] came, I was scrolling to see which film it was for. We were filming in Varkala last March. ” Although Rima is seen far and between onscreen, the work that she has been doing is interesting, in her own words. “Getting a best actor award for a film like Theatre — A Myth of Reality alongside mainstream films for which Tovino [Thomas] and Nazriya [Nazim] got awards is saying something about films and where Malayalam cinema is.” 

Backstage, which recently dropped on the Waves app, is the story of estrangement and reconciliation of two dancer friends, Gowri (Padmapriya) and Rima’s Sree Kanya. The nuanced telling of a story that only Anjali can, and abhinaya-laced performances by the two actors is a refreshing and evocative take on layered female friendships. Rima calls getting to work with Anjali a dream come true.

Rima, 41, says the film’s set was a ‘safe space’ where more than 60 percent of the people on the set were women. “When we were shooting the climax, when the two friends talked to resolve the estrangement, every woman there had tears in her eyes. That is the thing about female friendship; they are more nuanced — we ask, we tell everything, we want to know…. We all have that one friend with whom we are or may have been estranged! It was so relatable.” 

Her last commercial release was Neelavelicham (2023). She was curious about how the audience would react to Backstage, which is a small slice of life presented in 40-odd minutes. 

The happiness shows, Rima is glowing because of it. With good reason — she has carved a space for herself despite hostility and ridicule for her political stance as a feminist or as a member of the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC).