faraz arif ansari is busy garnering accolades for his film sheer qorma starring swara bhasker divya dutta and shabana azmi the lgbtq short film has been making waves across the globe etimes caught up with the young filmmaker for an exclusive interview where he spilled the beans on contemporary cinema around the queer community the people he idolises in bollywood his favourite actors in the industry and much moreread alsofaraz arif ansari sheer qorma has been written and directed by a queer person 95 per cent of its cast happens to be womenetimes exclusively caught up with the director who spilled the beans on what makes the film different from the others his fun equation with his films leading ladiesshabana azmi swara bhasker and divya dutta and moreexcerptswhats your take on the existing contemporary cinema around queer representationsmy biggest problem with the existing representation of queer identities is that it is being made by people who are not a part of the queer community and they are only making these films because after the section 377 verdict there has been an increase in the queer narratives and queer subjects it will never be as powerful as queer people making a queer narrative when it comes to bringing forward something which you have lived all your life to be able to do justice to that you cannot do justice to it by doing research when a queer person makes a film on a queer community it comes from relailife experiences that is where i feel the problem really lies we dont really have enough queer representation behind the camera and that really needs to changebollywood celebrities are coming out actively and supporting the lgbtqia community in films and otherwise do you think it is enoughit is not enough and it is never going to be enough the decades of damage that has been done to the queer community by problematic stereotypical identities have been brought forward by reducing the queer character to a caricature i went to school in the 90s and was bullied and harassed for what i was that damage still continues homophobia exists today so largely in india bollywood has a big hand to play in it there is no denying this in order to repair the damage we need more and more support more queer films and more queer visibility in the media it is never going to be enough unless we can say that a queer person in india holds equal rights opportunities and equal sociopolitical prestige the way a nonqueer person does then we can say maybe we have done our best unless that we are no way close to enoughthe growing emergence of ott has been a boon to many filmmakers actors and even technicians do you think it will give opportunities to filmmakers to narrate stories related to the communitiesi think this is a problematic understanding people think now there is ott so i should now start making films for ott platforms why