Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy spoke about the unauthorized use of Beatles songs in Annie, the growing presence of artificial intelligence in cinema and the handcrafted aesthetic of independent filmmaking during a Q&A at BFI Southbank on July 15 after the UK premiere of the film’s 4K restoration.
Regarding the film’s soundtrack, Roy said that after asking the Beatles to use their music, she and director Pradip Krishen did not receive a response from the Beatles. “We wrote them a letter and said, ‘Can we use your music? We love you.’ They didn’t respond,” Roy said.
Roy said he saw a continuity between the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the memoir “Mother Mary Comes to Me,” which he called “the altar worship of those four boys.”
Roy also compared the film’s low-budget, handmade production to the sophistication of modern cinema, saying he preferred imperfect characters to synthetic ones. “People love people who stumble, stumble, fail and mess up, not the beautiful AI-generated characters in Ozempic,” Roy said, drawing laughs from the audience.
Regarding the making of the film, Roy said that the film was shot essentially without a budget, using handwritten credits and sketches that she created herself. She said the roughness of the work reflected student life at the time. “There’s a kind of radical freedom in these ragged students,” Roy says.
The screening was held as part of the 17th London Indian Film Festival and marks the film’s first UK release following its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. The Film Heritage Foundation carried out the restoration in collaboration with lab partner Rimazin Ritrovata, with Krishen’s involvement. The research team utilized extant elements, including a 16mm negative and matching soundtrack from the National Film Archive of India, and a 35mm print from the Film Heritage Foundation’s own collection.
Roy wrote and starred in the film along with Roshan Seth, Arjun Raina and Rituraj, with Shah Rukh Khan appearing in an early cameo. She went on to write The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and recently published her memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me.
The appearance comes months after Roy withdrew from the Berlin Film Festival over his refusal to comment on Gaza.
