Rahul Ravindran on casting Rashmika Mandanna in The Girlfriend: ‘I wanted an actor with very transparent eyes to play Bhooma’

There’s something very endearingly organic about Rahul Ravindran’s latest film, The Girlfriend, from its unembellished and unflinching portrayal of modern love and relationships to central performances that feel authentic and refreshing at once. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW VIDEO

Rahul Ravindran’s gaze as a writer and director upends norms that have long defined mainstream Indian cinema’s portrayal of female autonomy and its glorification of coercive masculinity. The film anchors itself in a delicate yet stirring performance from Rashmika Mandanna – one that has rightly earned wide praise – but the real force of it all lies beyond the usual contours of public or critical opinion; The Girlfriend elicits a sense of catharsis and introspection that now seems pertinent to the Indian viewer, more