Awards Season Picks: The White Tiger

For this episode of our video series, we hear from screenwriter and director Ramin Bahrani and actor Adarsh Gourav. They sit down with writer Piya Sinha-Roy to discuss their BAFTA- and Oscar®-nominated film, The White Tiger.

At a time when the world can seem increasingly divided, and binary concepts dictate power and privilege, this conversation between screenwriter and director Ramin Bahrani, actor Adarsh Gourav and writer Piya Sinha-Roy is one about duality.

There’s the duality of protagonist Balram Halwai, played by Gourav, who stars alongside Priyanka Chopra and Rajkummar Rao. The archetypal underdog, born into poverty and searching for a different life, Balram is characterised by his contradictions – just as all humans are – who, as Bahrani notes, we like, even as he’s doing awful things. There’s the duality of a plot that is recognisable the world over, and yet in this instance is entirely and authentically South Asian, operating outside the white gaze, and all the cliches and romanticised tropes that it entails. And then there’s the duality of perspective that can be achieved by rejecting the white Western world as the centre of discussion.

This is an unmissable conversation about a film that embodies representation, authenticity and art as a driver of social and political change.

Read the piece on Soho House here.