Radhika Apte makes a career turn with genre-bending Sister Midnight

Bollywood star plays a woman rebelling against her arranged marriage in Karan Kandhari's film, premiering this week at the London Film Festival

Radhika Apte stars in Sister Midnight, a British-backed film by Karan Kandhari. Photo: Protagonist Pictures

“It was quite absurd,” laughs Radhika Apte. The popular Indian actress is thinking about the script for her new film, Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight.

“Just a bit bonkers. Like anything happens. I mean, you couldn’t imagine what happens. And it felt exciting. It was very honest. Karan had written exactly what he wanted to make without thinking about other things. Like, what would commercial producers think of it? It was solely his vision.”

A droll black comedy about newlyweds in Mumbai, the film was shown for the first time at Cannes earlier this year. It was one of several Indian-set movies at the world’s most famous film festival, signifying a banner year.

Now it is about to premiere in the UK at the BFI London Film Festival, where British audiences will get to see Apte, 39, in what may well be regarded as a key turning point in her career. “In India people are not very used to watching films like this," she remarks.

Well-known to Indian audiences for her work over the last 15 years, Apte came to prominence in 2014 with Lai Bhaari, the highest-grossing Marathi film of all time. But Sister Midnight, a British-backed film, is far removed from this or any Bollywood spectacle. She plays Uma, a spirited spouse who rebels against her arranged marriage and her weak-willed husband (Ashok Pathak). Seasoned with the wit of a Jim Jarmusch or a Wes Anderson movie, it is a genre-bending tale of female independence.

“It is completely different to anything I’ve done before,” Apte claims of Sister Midnight. “And it’s one of my favourite parts ever. She’s full of heart. The character is so endearing and innocent and rebellious. It was so interesting to be able to play something... it felt like my whole body had changed to be her. I really enjoyed it.”

The daughter of two doctors, Apte was raised in Pune, near Mumbai, and has worked and lived there over the years.

She adds: “I remember once telling Karan that this film felt like the tale of the city of Bombay, because it is a crumbling world and the spirit of Bombay survives and finds a way. So it is about that. It’s about domestic life. It’s about anything being trapped, and how the spirit escapes to find its own place.”

Apte pays tribute to Kandhari, an Indian-born director who studied film in London and made the acclaimed short Flight of the Pompadour. “He was juggling a lot and yet he was trying to maintain such a beautiful connection with me constantly,” she says.

Kandhari comes across as a details-oriented director, even given technical hitches. Apte explains: “The tiny monitor that he was given… basically, the resolution was so bad that people stopped looking at it for continuity or anything because you couldn’t see anything. It was just dark. And Karan would just find the minutest thing.”

Despite the film being made independently, it wasn’t so different from Apte’s earlier experiences in big-scale Indian movies, with huge crews. “It just comes with the territory... you have to in India, unfortunately," she says. “I did a film with Michael Winterbottom [The Wedding Guest, co-starring Dev Patel], where we had a very small crew. It was very productive. But in India, it’s impossible to have smaller crews for various reasons. There are so many people on set.”

Apte thinks Sister Midnight, with its interludes of animation and its genre-defying vibe, will be a real tonic – especially in India, where action rules. “Audiences get bored so quickly,” sighs Apte. “They don’t want silences. They don’t want to think. They don’t want to wait for something to reveal itself. They want to just know everything. And everything has to be active and loud. It’s what I see in content largely at the moment, which is very, very popular. I’m talking about really popular stuff. And this film is really not that.”

It's no surprise to learn that Apte has European sensibilities. Married to British composer and musician Benedict Taylor since 2012, the actress has since left India behind as she looks to find work abroad. “I’ve moved to the UK,” Apte reveals. “I have substantially reduced my work in India and I’m hoping to get more work in the UK.”

She recently shot The Last Days of John Allen Chow in a “very, very hot Thailand” for Justin Lin, the director best known for filming several of the Fast & Furious movies. It tells the real-life story of a missionary who attempted to make contact with the remote Sentinelese people. Whisper it quietly, but it looks like the Sister Midnight star is on the cusp of something very special.

Sister Midnight screens at the BFI London Film Festival on October 16, 17 and 20