Filmmaker Mira Nair has unveiled the first look of her upcoming feature Amri, inspired by the life and art of pioneering modern Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil. The film stars Anjali Sivaraman as Sher-Gil.
The biopic also features Emily Watson as her mother Marie-Antoinette Gottesman, Jaideep Ahlawat as her father Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, Krisztián Csákvári as Victor Egan, Anjana Vasan as Indira Sher-Gil, Jim Sarbh as Karl Khandalavala, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Madame Azurie.
Set across Hungary, France and India in the early 20th century, the film traces the worlds of Europe and India that shaped Sher-Gil’s imagination and artistic vision. The makers said the film wrapped production this week after shooting across locations in India and Europe.
“Every film I’ve made in the last several decades has been inspired by the art of Amrita Sher-Gil. She taught me how to see. She absorbed the best European training to distill the soul of India in a way that no one ever had — it is this distillation that has informed my own cinema from the beginning. The bravery of her palette, color and framing of the ordinary people of India has eternally moved me,” Nair told Deadline.
Amri explores Sher-Gil’s coming of age as an artist and a woman, her search for selfhood, her defiance of convention and her determination to create a visual language of her own, according to the makers.
The film also looks at how Sher-Gil, who became the youngest student admitted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Paris, evolved a personal aesthetic rooted in the everyday lives of ordinary Indians despite being trained in European artistic traditions.
The producers said the film examines how “an extraordinarily creative person comes to see India and its people on their own terms, not filtered through European or conventional perspectives”.
The makers also announced that major exhibitions of Sher-Gil’s works are planned worldwide in 2027, beginning in Paris before travelling to Los Angeles, Doha and New Delhi, where a permanent exhibition is planned.
Nair has co-written the film with Clara Royer. The project is produced by Arora, Nozik and Nair through Mirabai, Samscape and Papertown Production in association with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and Miramax.
