Mod is caught in a bind that conflicts many creatives of colour, where ultimately you want your work to speak for itself, but when you are in receipt of a platform you also feel you must shed light on the additional hurdles faced by you and other peers in your community to be seen at all. When we caught up at the end of the trip, she spoke once again about her hurdles in the arts: “I know that me getting into this industry, to get my foot in the door was incredibly difficult,” she said. “It was incredibly difficult. I really grafted. I didn’t have any connection to the industry. I didn’t come from money.” Amid this Ambika says she’s hopeful she will one day be back to present her own work at the film festival and soon we will see the actress in a comedy heist film where she stars alongside an incredible cast that includes Charli XCX as radical environmentalists kidnap the guests of a charity gala to support their cause.

We sat down to ask her at Cannes Film Festival to about her approach to fame, her dreams to be on SNL, and what equality would actually look like in the world of entertainment:

You said that you didn’t think this industry was for you, why is that?

When I was really little, I had no reference point for it. I just watched films. And I was like, I want to do that. And then as I got older, like, I was like, Oh, that’s not gonna happen for me, because brown girls aren’t on TV.

What would you write in the Burn Book for the arts right now?

I feel like this industry has become really risk averse. We see the same five people in everything, the same white faces in everything. I find that really frustrating. I don’t know what the solution is. I haven’t been in this industry long enough to give an intelligent answer about this, but I would love people to start just taking risks on especially younger voices, voices of colour, voices from marginalised backgrounds, who have really fresh, exciting stories. And also because those people, as I said before, are used to having to work really hard to get half as far. If you give them the chance, they will fucking run with it. They work so hard. And I’m speaking about this from personal experience. So I suppose that’s really what I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, and something that I’ve been trying to be conscious of. My God, this industry is changing so quickly at the moment. It’s almost unrecognisable to how it was five years ago.

What will feel like true equality to you in the industry?

For me? Not having to put the word female in front of director or writer or producer, not having to categorise a creative or a piece of work by the gender – I still think that’s a mad thing. Male is the standard, and then anything else needs to be specified. I would also just love to not talk about the colour of my skin as much as I do. I would love to just talk about my work. Regardless of my being brown and how rare it is for me to be in this position – and it is, so I will happily talk about it – but I and so many others are working towards a future where I’m just allowed to do my job in the same way that my white peers are allowed to. They don’t have to be responsible for anyone but themselves whereas I constantly have to be a spokesperson and bear that social responsibility.

The last time I saw you in the flesh was actually the last Glastonbury