By Sachin Chatte

Given her striking features, there is every chance that you might mistake her for an actress. Loveleen Tandan could have well been one, but her forte lies elsewhere. She was on board as the casting director of the acclaimed film Slumdog Millionaire and also went on to become the co-director of the film. She spends a lot of time in Goa nowadays, but at this year’s IFFI, she was a part of the jury that selected films for the Indian Panorama.

"It was a very exciting time, we saw more than 120-odd films from different parts of the country within a period of three weeks. There were films in just about every language including Tulu, which is spoken in parts of Karnataka." she said. "The Malayalam films were quite impressive, even they have some seriously good cinema there and Marathi films are also quite poignant because of their rich cultural heritage," she added.

The films from the North East were a revelation to her. "We are not all that familiar with their lifestyle culture, and even though technically they still have to cover a fair distance, their films were still quite impressive. For us it is North East as a whole, but yet the states are so very different from each other," said Loveleen, who grew up in Delhi.

Elaborating on the process of selecting films for the Indian Panorama, she said there are ten members who are given various films to watch and then with a further discussion they finally arrive at a consensus. The veteran film maker Sai Paranjpe was the head of the selection jury this year.

As far as the comparison between regional films and Bollywood is concerned she voices her opinion with conviction, "Regional films in India are far superior compared to the Bollywood fare. Hindi films may be technically better with bigger budgets, but when it comes to storytelling, regional films win hands down."

Ask her about the Slumdog Millionaire experience and you can see the twinkle in her eye. "It was one roller coaster ride and an unbelievable experience." So does she remember how it all started? "Yes I do," she said. "I was about to leave from Mumbai to Delhi when I got a call from London. There were no details about the director and the other crew, all I knew was that they wanted to shoot the film." After giving her consent to consider it, she got the script and was keen to be on board to join the project.

"It was later that I came to know Danny Boyle will be directing the film and he is a very adaptive person who is open to suggestions," said Loveleen, who has a Masters degree in Mass Communication. It was her idea to have the first quarter of the film in Hindi. The original script was completely in English and given that the slum kids were going to speak she thought it would look odd. "So I decided to push the envelope and convinced Danny by shooting some of the street children speak the way they do," she said.

After Danny agreed to the suggestion, since he couldn’t have shot the scenes where the kids speak in Hindi, Loveleen was elevated to the status of co-director. The rest, as the old cliché goes, is history.

She is now trying to leave the past behind and move forward. "I am working on a script for the last two years and am in the process of developing it into a screenplay," she said about her directorial venture. It is a contemporary story about how India has changed in the last decade or so, she revealed, while quickly glancing through the schedule of IFFI films.

She also spends a lot of her time in Goa now – "I live in Assagao and Goa is such a great place to do anything creative."

Now that is something no one can debate, and here is welcoming the lady from the film fraternity of Goa.