This August, Saiyami Kher returned to the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne three years after her sports drama, Ghoomer, co-starring Abhishek Bachchan, opened the 2023 edition. This time, she was at IFFM with Pal Bhar Ke Liye, fashion designer Vikram Phadnis's directorial debut, which premiered on August 16.
Delving into the behind-the-scenes of the film, Kher recollects wrapping the film's shoot in early March, making it "the quickest turnaround on a film I've done."
The film wrapped shoot in early March, making it, as she notes, the fastest turnaround of her career. "That is all credit to Vikram, because he is crazy on deadlines." She also remembers the project with fondness since she was involved in the post production process, with Phadnis having her sit for every edit. "He'd been calling me through the edit, showing me every scene, so it almost feels like I've sat through the whole edit myself."
Even so, she believes nothing compares to a film's first public screening. "There's always this strange mix of excitement and nervousness, because you're so attached to the film, and it's the first time it's going out to an audience. So you've got butterflies in your stomach, hoping people are not just going to be sitting on their phone!"
In Pal Bhar Ke Liye, Kher plays a fashion photographer, a first for her, and a role that taught her the skill. "The film is about this really ambitious girl who feels she has control over everything in her life," she explains, "and then something happens that completely turns it upside down, and she loses all that control. That's when she realises how important family is."
She calls the character the most contemporary one she's played to date. "It's a very day-to-day, modern, ambitious girl, very Mumbai-based; I haven't been shown in that light before."
This, she remarks, is a refreshing change, since she feels her character in Ghoomer and her own personal fitness-first content online typecast her to the role. "Funnily so, because I'm so passionate about my sport, and so obsessively talk about it on my social media, that I tend to get stereotyped as, 'Oh, the sport film girl.'"
On working opposite Tahir Raj Bhasin and Vineet Kumar Singh, Kher reveals they are both actors she says she'd long wanted to work with. Their roles in this film, she reveals, "break the stereotype entirely for both Vineet and Tahir."
Having worked with Vineet Kumar Singh before, through their shared work with filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, she remembers how the two had long wanted to collaborate on something solid after a smaller film together.
With Tahir Raj Bhasin, whom she first met at a workshop years ago, she remembers his "wicked sense of humour" with a laugh.
With Pal Bhar Ke Liye heading to Melbourne for its world premiere, and currently without an India release date, and Haiwaan, Priyadarshan's action thriller starring Saif Ali Khan, Akshay Kumar and Kher, awaiting its theatrical release this September, the actor says it's a rare stretch where two very different films are arriving close together.
"I feel like none of my films have had such quick turnarounds. Most of my films, the shoot finishes and we release a year later. This feels like I'm just literally waiting for my call sheet to go and shoot, but it's actually releasing. So it's very different from most of the other films I've done."