The Kerala Story salesman

A still from Kerala story

When Priya Samant moved from Goregaon to Boston around 20 years ago, the techie was fuelled by the great American dream. But her heart was always in the movies. Samant grew up near Goregaon Film City, and was surrounded by creative people.

The 46-year-old, who is now a co-founder of a tech-company in the US, has started channelling that passion by working as "impact advisor" for Indian films. Her recent foray was with the just released The Kerala Story. Samant segued into movies when the Hindi film Jhalki, directed by Brahmanand S Singh, was screened at the Boston Film Festival in 2019. A chance meeting with the director set her on track. "When I met Singh, I told him how I saw a huge gap between the narrative and the reach," she says, "All the stories coming from India seemed to have great content and actors, but because they were not necessarily big stars, these movies failed to generate the massive appeal they could have enjoyed in both, the US and in domestic markets." Singh later put her onto other Indian directors and producers. Her role was to promote films among the diaspora, before and after the release.

Kashmir Files was one of the first movies that Samant impact advised for and which featured big stars like Anupam Kher were roped in

One of the first films she took on was Anjali Bhushan's My Home India, a documentary set towards the end of World War II, and which tells the story of a Polish ambassadorial team in Bombay - led by Kira Banasinska and supported by local Indian communities - that dispatched a convoy of food relief and other essentials, thousands of miles to Iran, where Polish refugees from Soviet Siberian labour camps had found their way on foot. It was, however, when working on another film called Illegal, which is about an undocumented Indian in the US, trying to support his family back home, that she came in touch with the Kashimiri diaspora. That led her to carry out "impact events" for The Kashmir Files (2022).

Samant spoke about the film, directed by Vivek Agnihotri, at Harvard and Denver universities, and even during a reception for the US Congress, where it received bipartisan support. "I even mentioned it at an event of United Nations, and it struck a chord, because the world was witnessing a lot of migration," she says, explaining, "The idea behind impact advising is to get the global community to understand the director's vision. So, for instance, if a film is showcased at a festival, we do a Q & A session with the audience after the screening. By introducing newer narratives to the world, you create ambassadors who are either very interested in social change or interested to learn about an issue or cause."

Priya Samant

The promotion of these films is solely dependent on how much time Samant has. With The Kerala Story, she came up with a strategy during an eight-hour flight. Producer Vipul Shah first contacted her earlier this year. "Then, I got a call from him on April 21, just before I was boarding a flight. He asked if I could help with a plan for the worldwide release on May 12," she says, adding, "I took it as a challenge and thought it would be a great idea to use Zoom to mobilise people, so we were not restricted by geography." Samant has already showcased the trailer at eight different Zoom events - the ninth one is scheduled this week. "The goal was to mobilise it [The Kerala Story] across the United States, including Boston, California, the entire West Coast Atlanta, Virginia, Washington DC, and Chicago." A media meet was also planned on Zoom for journalists from the US.

She has tapped into Zoom panels on terrorism, women and human rights issues, and religious conversion. "A former senior government official, who is a Kashmiri Hindu who grew up in an atmosphere sullied by militancy; a lawyer who works with survivors [of conversion]; and an ex-police official from Kerala were part of one of the Zoom discussions," she says. The Kerala Story opened in 200 screens around the US on May 12, and has earned over '171 crore in 14 days. Samant says that the reason she took on The Kerala Story was because she felt it (conversion of women under false pretense and their recruitment by the ISIS) was a "global issue". "This is happening all around the world," she says. As far as the #LoveJihad controversy and the call to ban the film goes, she thinks, "We live in a democracy and everyone has the right to disagree. One shouldn't be judgemental. There is no religion bashing; the film is simply trying to highlight an issue prevalent in society," she says, adding, "You know, my brother and I used to called our late mother, ammi [despite being Maharashtrian]. That is the culture I grew up in."