Her sartorial choices playing second fiddle, Huma Qureshi slayed the Cannes Film Festival with an impassioned speech on the place of women in cinema. Part of the Madhur Bhandarkar-hosted Women in Global Cinema discussion at the India Pavillion on Saturday, Qureshi joined the likes of American actor Judi Beecher and Australian filmmaker Saara Lamberg in highlighting the concern behind 'women-centric' films.

Qureshi tells mid-day that by attaching the label with cinema, people are essentially detaching "films about women from the concept of regular films." She says, "With this segregation, we are removing women-oriented films from mainstream cinema. It almost sounds like women require special attention, when, in an ideal scenario, a story's requirement should be independent of its protagonist's gender. Cinema mirrors society's thought process, and the way we are thinking, is changing. In India, women show-runners are making great movies, and roles for female actors are no longer limited to those that showcase them as damsels in distress. We are rescuing ourselves."