From Mullanpur theatre to Cannes fest, actor gets adulation for ‘Chamm’

Gurvinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, February 21

Mullanpur-based Surender Sharma is used to being applauded by the audience of the Lok Kala Manch of Mullanpur Theatre Group. But now, he is winning adulation for his performance in ‘Chamm’, a film that has made its entry into the Cannes Film Festival.

Surender Sharma plays the protagonist in the film which is based on the struggle of Dalits in our society.

Though Sharma has played some cameo roles in movies earlier also, this was his first as the lead character. Speaking about his character in the film, he said he played the role of a man who took of the dead skin of animals. He said he played the chief of a Dalit family in the film. The family is denied the agricultural land reserved for them because of the dominance of other castes.

It is about their collective struggle to reclaim the land, with a message that the struggle in the society has to come down to the class level and not to the caste level.

Sharma (47) has been doing theatre for the past thirty years and has acted in some films by Rajeev Sharma, director of award-winning film Nabar, in Jatinder Mauhar-directed Qissa Punjab, and Saade Ale.

Harkesh Chaudary (47), another actor from the theatre group, plays the role of a village sarpanch in this film. He said theatre had been an important way of communicating and depicting the scenario at the grass-root level.

He said even though the audience for the films which depicted the reality at the grass-root level in society is less, they were taking the film to the masses in villages instead of waiting for them to come to cinema houses and multiplexes , he added.