Actor-model Geeta Doshi still cannot believe that her film, A Doll Made Up Of Clay had its world premiere at the Festival de Cannes 2025. A film made by the students of Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) in Kolkata saw a cross-cultural, cross-continental approach.
It is a “zero-budget” film, directed by an Ethiopian student of SRFTI, Kokob Gebrehaweria Tesfay, and has Ibrahim Ahmed from Nigeria as the lead. Geeta, who plays the companion to Ibrahim’s character, shares that this is the first time a film has been made in Bengali and African languages, with English subtitles. We speak to Geeta to learn more about the film.
How did you bag this role?
I was involved in another SRFTI project called Abyss a few years back. The director Kokob was the sound recordist in this film. He reached out to me and said that he wanted me to be a part of his new film, A Doll Made Up of Clay.
What made you take up the film?
Honestly, I wasn’t very sure about taking it up, since I knew that it was a zero-budget film and they couldn’t give me remuneration. But the producer, Sahil Manoj Ingle, a student of SRFTI’s Producing for Film and Television department, convinced me that he would send his film to Cannes under the La Cinef section. And I am so glad that all of our dreams came true, and not just that, ours was the only Indian film to have been showcased under that section.
Was language ever a barrier, since it’s more like an Indo-African collaborative project?
It was. One is from Nigeria, one from Ethiopia, and I am from Kolkata. The language was a barrier initially, I couldn’t understand Kokob’s thought process clearly, but once we started with the workshops, we were on the same page. Since Ibrahim, who played the lead of the Nigerian footballer, is a non-actor, he faced slight difficulty understanding what to do and what not to, but the director made him comfortable.
Once a creative director, now an actor (as seen in thriller series Kaala), do you think this Cannes moment would be beneficial for your career?
I have my fingers crossed!