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Kani Kusruti is an Indian actress and model. She first gained recognition in 2009 with the film Kerala Cafe, where her performance was critically acclaimed. Kani won the Best Actress at Kerala State Film Awards in 2020 and the Best Actress Award at the Moscow International Film Festival for her performance as Khadeeja in the film Biriyaani.
Kani was born in Trivandrum, Kerala to social activist and rationalist parents Jayasree AK and Maitreya Maitreyan. Her parents had dropped their last names to erase the social hierarchy marker that comes with last names in India. At 15, she invented her last name "Kusruti" (meani
Kani Kusruti is an Indian actress and model. She first gained recognition in 2009 with the film Kerala Cafe, where her performance was critically acclaimed. Kani won the Best Actress at Kerala State Film Awards in 2020 and the Best Actress Award at the Moscow International Film Festival for her performance as Khadeeja in the film Biriyaani.
Kani was born in Trivandrum, Kerala to social activist and rationalist parents Jayasree AK and Maitreya Maitreyan. Her parents had dropped their last names to erase the social hierarchy marker that comes with last names in India. At 15, she invented her last name "Kusruti" (meaning "mischievous" in Malayalam) to fill in a requirement in her class 10th exam application. She grew up in Thiruvanthapuram, where she got introduced to the Abhinaya Theatre Research Centre, "a common platform for theatre practitioners". She later moved to Thrissur, where she enrolled in the theatre arts program at the Thrissur Drama School, between 2005 and 2007. She completed her theatre education at the L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, where she studied physical theatre for two years.
Kusruti's mother Dr. Jayasree AK, a community medicine specialist and social activist, lectures at Pariyaram Medical College, and is a regular guest on talk shows. Her father Maitreya Maitreyan has worked for, and led, several human rights movements in Kerala.
She lives in Mumbai with her partner, the filmmaker and science communicator Anand Gandhi. She identifies herself as an atheist and a rationalist. On 19 February 2019, she revealed she quit acting due to sexual demands from filmmakers. The actress has now made serious claims against the Malayalam film industry. Shockingly, Kani has claimed that filmmakers even approached her mom to convince her to give in to their demands. Kani chose to go back to theatre, but she couldn't earn enough in that industry to make a living.
However, Kani is hopeful about the Malayalam film industry after the #MeToo Movement and initiations like Women in Cinema Collective. In 2019, Kusruti along with 48 other notable artists in the country had written an open letter to Narendra Modi over incidents of lynching in the country.
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