‘High time the industry stops discriminating cinema’

After delivering four back to back hits, Ayushmann Khurranna is being hailed as one of the most dependable mainstream actors of the Hindi film industry. Ayushmann, however, is against being labelled because he feels the industry discriminates between films and genres through its skewed demarcation of what it decides mainstream cinema to be.

Ayushmann, who is currently promoting Article 15, a socio-political film, directed by Anubhav Sinha says, “I think the way we have defined mainstream so far has been extremely skewed and discriminatory. Every film has its set of audience and not every film is meant to appeal to everyone. That’s the beauty of films. It’s subjective, it evokes an intimate and highly personal reaction and entertains like-minded people.”

He adds, “Just because a film’s appeal doesn’t conform to what some would think as pan Indian, doesn’t make it a non-mainstream film. One immediately judges films with a different sensibility and to me that’s hugely discriminatory. I have fought this discrimination and will continue to do so all my career. Thankfully, my content choices have worked and proved that there is an audience for every kind of film.”

Ayushmann calls for a more inclusive atmosphere in the industry and is rooting for anti-labeling of content. “We shouldn’t see film-making through just one filter of it being a pan India mass entertainer. We take the meaning and beauty out of making films by doing this. It is a medium of bold creative expressions and we should celebrate everyone’s work and be inclusive about ideas and opinions. Every film has a different purpose and it’s great to have powerful and different voices and ideas,” he says.

The versatile actor believes that the validation he has got with back to back hits (Andha Dhun, Badhai Ho, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan and Bareilly Ki Barfi) has driven him to stay on the path of giving audiences quality, entertaining cinema that they would want to come to the theatres to watch. “To me, mainstream is an abused word. For me, mainstream cinema is every film that people simply love to watch because of reasons that are personal to them. The world has progressed to being anti-label, high time our industry too moves away from labelling audiences and films.”

Article 15, releasing on June 28, also stars Isha Talwar, Sayani Gupta, Kumud Mishra and Manoj Pahwa.