Every year in Cannes there is one beauty queen who turns up in the Indian pavilion on the Croisette harbouring ambitions of making it big in Bollywood.

This year it has been the turn of a tall Afghan girl, Vida Samadzai — “I’m 5ft 9in” — who said that “I wouldn’t be sitting here if the beauty contest had been held in Afghanistan”.

She has been in a few movies already — Black & White, Acid Factory and Apartment among them — but this is, she hopes just the start of a career “in Bollywood as well as in Hollywood”. She adds she divides her time between America and India.

In her daring choli, Vida, who has another name, ‘Ameena’, which she dropped because she did not wish to be typecast, certainly turns heads. This is probably the precise ‘Mallika Sherawat effect’ she wishes to achieve. But she also has an intriguing story to tell.

Born on February 22, 1978, and raised in Kabul, Vida — Miss Afghanistan US 2003 — is an ethnic Pashtun. The American accent is explained by the fact she moved to the US in 1996. She studied at California State University, Fullerton, and apparently has a double major in advertising and speech communications. Given her fluency, her time as a student clearly has not been wasted.

As the first Afghan woman to participate in an international beauty pageant since 1974, her appearance in a red bikini in the 2003 edition of Miss Earth pageant caused uproar back in her native country. Her participation was condemned by the Afghan Supreme Court on the grounds that flaunting her body, something expected of her in new life in Mumbai, was allegedly unIslamic. The court has so far not pronounced judgment on the skimpiness of her choli.

She loves the life in Mumbai but for a single girl to climb the greasy pole in Bollywood, a world peopled by vultures apparently, is not without its problems. For a start, given the profusion of tiny Indian men in tinsel town, “directors sometimes despair of finding actors suitable for me”, she admits. There is also the tendency of the press to make things up, she goes on. “I can’t go anywhere with someone,” she says. “Even if it is a friend, the press make things up.”

In Cannes, the poor girl had tickets to the red carpet screening for which the stars and even the audience dress up in formal attire — long gowns for the ladies and black tie for the men. Vida decided it was better not to ask an escort to come with her. “I slept alone in my room,” she volunteers sadly.

The one movie high up in Vida’s list of films to see is Kabuliwallah. “So many people have told me about it,” she says. She likes the idea that one day someone might offer her a part in a possible remake of the classic film.