After making her directorial debut with “Roam Rome Mein” (2019), she won the Marie Claire Asia Star Award and Indian filmmaker and actor Tannishtha Chatterjee faced her great challenge and completed her sophomore effort “Full Plate”. This year, Chatterjee was awarded the Marie Claire Visionary Director Award.
“Yes, we were diagnosed when we were post-production. Everything was double-strength in already difficult situations,” the director reveals. “It wasn’t a small thing. It was about whether I would live or not.”
Starring Kirti Kulhari alongside Sharib Hashmi, Indraniel Senta, Monica Dogra and Sachin Chaudhary, the social drama is a Muslim woman who becomes the main producer of the family, challenging both tradition and prejudice. The film explores themes of gender expectations, religious discrimination, and tensions between family duties and individual choices.
“Food is a political idea. It reflects history and reveals socioeconomic circumstances,” the director says. “Taste, health, nutrition are all shaped by class, availability and exposure.”
He graduated from the National Drama School in New Delhi and has appeared in many films surrounding his 15-year acting career, including Brick Lane (2007), Choice of Cannes Monsoon Shootout (2013), and Toronto Selection of The Lion (2016), and inspiration from real life observations for the latest director’s efforts. The project began with a chattery, a careful look at domestic workers, and initially found humor in the frustration of different households about their eating habits. “As I delved deeper I discovered a much more convincing story,” she says.
Kulhari, who previously worked with the director as a co-star on “Jal,” committed to the project before the script was finished. “Kilty became a character and the character became her in the writing process for me,” the director points out. The actor received extensive preparations, spent time in real places and with the kids in the film.
Production faced the challenges of typical indie films, making it difficult to increase funding — but the director’s health crisis added unprecedented complexity. As a single mother who cared about both her 9-year-old child and her mother in her 70s, she was forced to rethink her approach to work and life.
“I don’t know how I gained the power to overcome everything. “We’re all talking about living in the moment. But we can’t do it without thinking too much about the past or the future. But I’ve been forced to just live every day.”
The director completed the film and halted post-production for several months to balance the director. Rather than viewing this as a disorder, she found the process to be therapeutic. “The finishing touches on the film was part of my healing process. Sitting in a music session and revisiting editing in a place was all part of healing.”
The film embraces a touch of magical realism to convey Amreen’s internal life. “When I read the novel, the characters’ inner monologues are revealed through the writer’s explanation of their thoughts. In the film, I tried to do that through visualization.
Despite addressing serious social issues, the director was careful to avoid sermons. “When we try to impose our own morality on stories that draw inspiration, it often becomes a sermon. I tried to avoid it,” she says. “There are all these themes in life and there’s no need to impose anything outside.”
This experience transformed her perspective on filmmaking into a collaborative effort. “I believe that with every film we also learn to let go of our ego. Filmmaking is a very deep and collaborative process. For my vision to come back to life, I had to rely on the incredible talents of others.”
Going forward, the director will focus on her health while developing a stage performance for “the last nine months of my life” with two collaborators. Unlike “Full Plate,” this project shows that she returns to performance rather than directing.
“I have to take care of my health,” she says simply. Even in an industry that was obsessed with their next project, it reminds me that sometimes the most important story is about survival itself.
