Rahul Bhat at Cannes 2025: ‘Home is a very emotional subject because I’m Kashmiri Pandit’

Actor Rahul Bhat at Cannes Film Festival 2025. (Photo: Stephanie Cornfield)

“I think an actor should be a mystery,” says Rahul Bhat on the sidelines of the 78th Cannes Film Festival, when I ask him about his age. This was the third time he was at the Cannes festival, where he unveiled the teaser for his new project Lost and Found in Kumbh (LAFIK) at the film market Marché du Film. “It’s just an announcement. It was a teaser drop here. Already, we could see so much of traction because so many festivals have requested for the film for screening. So, it’s been quite successful,” he said from the India Pavilion. Prior to this, two of his films, a decade apart and directed by Anurag Kashyap, were at the festival’s official selections: Ugly (2013) at Directors’ Fortnight and Kennedy (2023) in Midnight Screenings.

Bhat, a Kashmiri Pandit, left the Valley as a teenager when militancy was at its peak in the ’89-90s and migrated to Mumbai. His good looks opened up the possibility of a modelling career. Then came television, with the popular, highest-rated serial Heena (1998-2003) opposite Simone Singh. Bhat, a Kashmiri Pandit, played a Muslim character in a serial that showed an Indian Muslim love story without stereotypical communal vilification. Something that is now vanishing from our screen stories and social fabric. Bhat became a known face in most Hindi-belt households.

Bored of television, he landed his first film in 2002, Yeh Mohabbat Hai with Umesh Mehra. Since then, it has been a chequered, absent-present career trajectory for Bhat. By the time Bhat did Kashyap’s Ugly, he had metamorphosed. In it, he plays an actor-father whose daughter gets kidnapped and fingers start to point towards him. This was a different actor now. More in control, more aligned to his craft, and more mysterious as an actor. Kashyap’s Kennedy (2023), about an insomniac ex-cop turned hitman remains unreleased in its home country. Earlier this year came Vikramaditya Motwane’s hit series Black Warrant, playing Tihar Jail senior police officer DSP Rajesh Tomar. With it, he tasted success. He will be next seen in Sudhir Mishra’s Summer of 77 web-series.

Edited excerpts from an interview:

Tell me about this new film that you’re doing, LAFIK (Lost and Found in Kumbh), which co-stars Rajshri Deshpande and is being produced by a Los Angeles-based production company? What is the film about and how did it come about?

So, the director is Mayur Puri, who has written Om Shanti Om (2007), Happy New Year (2014), and ABCD: Any Body Can Dance (2013), big blockbusters he has written before this. This is his directorial debut. And the producers are from LA (the US). It’s being produced by a production company called Mulberry Films. And it’s totally shot in English language. So, we shot it at the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad), when the Mahakumbh was in progress [earlier this year]. There were more than 660 million people at Kumbh this year. The film is about an English professor who has a British wife and a kid. And they come to Prayagraj, to the Kumbh because the father has asked him to come here. But when they reach, the father is missing. And his ex-wife, an Indian wife, and the son from that wife, they are there. So, it’s a bit of a very awkward situation for the family. And they go looking for the father, to ask him why he had summoned them here. And when they go looking for him, they lose their two boys in Kumbh.

Is it a thriller?

No, it’s a comedy, it’s actually a dramedy. It’s like a children’s film.

In between Ugly and Kennedy, besides other Hindi films, you also did a Chinese film?

Yeah, I did a Chinese film [True Heroes] in between. I went to Beijing, Sanya and Hong Kong to shoot the film. But we could not compete because of COVID.

Do you see Ugly as a game-changer in your acting career?

I mean, yes, it was here in Director’s Fortnight in Cannes and it did very well here. And after working with Anurag Kashyap, I got a lot of exposure because of that film. And then, of course, my film Kennedy was here in official selection in 2023. And Kennedy has travelled well, it was in Toronto, it was in Europe.

But not in India. So, when is Kennedy releasing here?

They are saying that there’s a buzz that it might release in August most probably. Let’s see. I mean, who can know about the minds of people who run these big studios, only they know.

You moved to Bombay and started modelling and followed it up with television. Why did you leave TV?

I did one show Heena (1998-2003), it ran for five years. It had the highest TRPs then, 17.1 rating. No show has broken that record since. Then, I got bored with TV because it was the same rut and all that. Then I got a film, Yeh Mohabbat Hai (2002). Umesh Mehra was a very big director in those days. He had done Sabse Bada Khiladi (1995), Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi (1996), International Khiladi (1999), all those series films with Akshay Kumar. So, he was a big deal. And I was just 23 years old. And he gave me one of the biggest breaks. But the film didn’t do well.

Nothing succeeds like success.

Obviously, one feels disappointed when your film doesn’t do well. It was a setback for me that time.

What kept you going?

I don’t know anything else. I just know how to act. That’s all I can do. (Laughs) After two decades, all my films, whether Ugly, Kennedy, Daas Dev, Union Leader, all the critics have been very kind to me. But let me tell you something, nothing succeeds like success. Whoever said this [widely attributed to French author Alexandre Dumas], was absolutely right. And, finally, at long last, my ears heard those three golden words: it is a hit. And that was for Black Warrant.

In an interview you said, when I was a TV star I was a bad actor and now that I am a good actor…

…yeah, now that I’m a good actor, they are not releasing my film [Kennedy].

But how did that metamorphosis happen, from Heena to Ugly. What did you do in the interim years to transform into a better actor?

My school of acting has been cinema, and I am an avid cinema watcher. I watch at least two films every day, if not three. And whatever I have learnt, I have learnt from these. Films by Ruben Östlund, Thomas Vinterberg, Yorgos Lanthimos, Abbas Kiarostami, Asghar Farhadi, I have learnt from these people, whatever I have learnt. Watching their films, and of course, our Indian directors, I like all of them.

An actor can be bad or good. But you should be an actor, you can’t be a non-actor. You can’t teach acting to a non-actor.

Grey is interesting. The directors I work with are twisted.

All three of them have a lot of similarities yet they are very unique. And, they have their own style. The best thing about all three of them is that they create an atmosphere for an actor just like how a mother incubates a child in her womb before the child is born, I think, with all these three directors, they create, they incubate the atmosphere so well, they make it so good for the baby (the actor) to come out into the world. They make the atmosphere so good that the actor just has to surrender and follow. And, all these three directors are great for actors.

For example, with Anurag Kashyap it’s like, between action and cut, one has to be very honest and completely (present), the whole process is that we (characters) have to reach there (the moment). Sudhir is more like, ‘what else can we do? This has been done so many times. How differently can we achieve it?’ And, and I think, Vikram Motwane is the best of the both worlds, because he has a great technical sense and believes a lot in technicality. And yet, he has great in both art and commercial.

Who loses his cool the quickest on the sets?

Nobody. All three of them are very, very cool people. Vikram comes prepared. Sudhir is always looking for something interesting on the set.

Mainstream films/series tend to show cops very cardboard-like black-and-white stereotypical characters. How did you want to do your role differently for Black Warrant?

Well, the whole idea was that it should not be... I was constantly talking to myself that I shouldn’t... because cops tend to become very boring. They are always in the same mood. I don’t know why they are always angry. So, I felt that let me make him interesting, let me not make him boring, let’s do something because the dialogues were not like punchy lines, they were just day-to-day talks, which can become boring if the actor doesn’t deliver it in a certain way. So, that was my constant challenge that I wanted to make it snazzy and a little bit sharp but interesting.

Some of your standout roles have had a negative shade to them. Shades of grey so to speak…

Grey is interesting.

Indeed. So, as an actor, do you have a natural proclivity to pick such roles that are a little negative, a little dark?

Not at all, I want to play the role of a God, but nobody is offering me that. The next time, I’ll definitely play God. I would love to do a very straightforward positive kind of a role. All my characters have been leading roles, and all different kinds of leads. Now, the directors I work with are twisted themselves. They don’t know how to make normal cinema. I have exhausted myself telling them to make a sweet love story, but they want twisted plots, maar-dhaar (action). (Laughs)

You are doing Sudhir Mishra’s web-series Summer of 77, where you’re playing Sanjay Gandhi, which is again a negative character.

There you go! There also they offered me Sanjay Gandhi. He wasn’t a simple character. They (this lot of directors) think that if the character is complex, let’s go to Rahul Bhat. (Laughs)

So, Summer of 77 is basically about the Emergency, I suppose. Which episode of Sanjay Gandhi’s life will be shown?

No, it’s different. The Emergency plays parallelly to the show. I can’t reveal it, but it’s interesting. This is the real-life character in a fictional setup. It’s a young people’s story.

You’ve worked with Sudhir Mishra earlier on Daas Dev (2018), and now this web-series. How much have you the actor evolved?

I think I’m a poor actor. I’m yet to evolve. It’s just the beginning.

When did the acting bug bit you? In your childhood, who was your favourite actor?

I always wanted to be an actor. I used to watch a lot of Hindi films. That time there was just Amitabh Bachchan. Every kid born in the ’70s and ’80s wanted to be Amitabh Bachchan.

Rahul Bhat at Cannes Film Festival 2025. (Photo: Stephanie Cornfield)

Which is your most favourite Bachchan film or dialogue?

Main aaj bhi phenke hue paise nahin uthata (Deewaar, 1975).

You saw his films in the theatres in Kashmir or on VCDs?

In the theatres. Theatres ran in Kashmir at the time, those hadn’t been yet burned by them [militants]. Palladium, Regal cinema, Shah theatre, Broadway, Shiraz were all the big names of the theatres there (Srinagar). I was that kid who used to go first day, first show. That kid who would run away from school to watch movies.

How do you define home?

Home is a very emotional subject for me because I am a Kashmiri Pandit and I have migrated from Kashmir in 1989-90s. So, I really don’t know what is home actually now.

Where or to what do you belong?

I belong to the world.

I’ve seen all the bad times in Kashmir when terrorism gripped it in ’89

-90s, I was there and then we had to migrate. The trauma, the wounds will never heal.

I mean, I’ve seen all the bad times in Kashmir when terrorism gripped it in ’89-90s, I was there. And then we had to migrate because if we had not migrated then we would have gotten killed. So, we had no option but to leave everything behind. Leave the home behind. And we became refugees in our own country. Refugees usually belong to another country but we migrated in our own country. So yes, that has left a lot of trauma. It will remain…the trauma, the wounds. They will never heal.

How do you see the rewriting of history now in the country?

I think the same thing is happening. What to do? Some people won’t change. We pray that God gives good wisdom to everyone. But some things cannot be solved. People will keep fighting. That is what is happening. What happened in Pahalgam? This only. The thing is that some issues remain unsolved. And they are so complex that we cannot do anything about it. The only thing that can solve these complex issues is love and peace. But it has to be reciprocated from both sides. And we can’t keep talking about history all the time. We have to move forward. But people don’t understand. Neither here, nor there. We should understand that we need to get out of this war and violence mindset.

We can't keep talking about history all the time. We have to move forward. We need to get out of this war and violence mindset.

I mean, a filmmaker made a film and it became a great film. People went to see it. What has been shown has happened. It is true. If anybody has an objection to that film, the answer for a film is another film. You make a film. Who is stopping you? I am a Kashmiri Pandit. I have never made a film on Kashmiri Pandits.

Would you like to make one?

I would like to make it. I have written the script. It’s a very big film. I need a lot of funds for that.

What are you working on next?

I have signed a very big film which I cannot talk about right now. I am shooting from July. I have signed two international films here. And one is in India.