In this conversation at the 79th Festival de Cannes, Anupama Chopra sits down with Huma Qureshi, who returns to Cannes thirteen years after she first walked the Croisette as a debutante with Anurag Kashyap's Gangs of Wasseypur in 2012. This year, Huma is back as a spokesperson for Indian cinema and as one of the honourees at the Red Sea Film Foundation's Women in Cinema Gala. With Maharani Season 4 wrapped, Dilli Crime Season 3 on its way, and her TIFF-premiered film Bayaan still travelling the festival circuit, Huma reflects on what has been the most rewarding stretch of her career — finally doing the work that resonates with her, finding the courage to say no to what doesn't, and building Saleem Siblings, the production house she runs with her brother Saqib Saleem, which is gearing up for its first film Baby Do Die Do. Huma speaks candidly about the long road to this moment — the loneliness of rejection, the rooms she was locked out of, the time spent waiting for the right opportunities that never came, and the eventual realisation that she would have to create her own. She talks about her acting process — not the kind built on three-day fasts or locked rooms, but on listening to her directors and staying receptive on set — and pushes back on the idea that an actress's worth is measured in how young and desirable she looks, choosing instead to play a Maharani and a Monica and a Bada Didi in the same year without apology. She closes by looking ahead to her producer ambitions — to make hyperlocal Indian stories that travel globally, the way The Lunchbox once did, and the way she hopes Bayaan can — and to keep refusing the safe and the rehearsed.