EXCLUSIVE: Arjun Rampal is on his way to shoot in Poland after a week of work in London and a short stopover in his home country of India when he sits down to chat with Deadline.

“It’s better to be busy than not busy in my job,” he says, freeing himself from jet lag.

The veteran actor’s program is the result of a late-career renaissance, which he recently launched with an acclaimed performance in Aparna Sen’s latest film, the rapist. Produced by Applause Entertainment in association with Quest Films Pvt. Ltd, the film chronicles the journey of three protagonists as their lives intertwine after a horrific incident. The film won Kim Jesouk award at Busan Film Festival and screened at Kerala Film Festival, Kolkata film festival of India and London indian movie Festival.

“When I read the script, it hit me. I thought it was such a wonderful, impactful take on what really happens to a rape victim,” he says of the film, which hasn’t been released worldwide yet.” Aparna is a wonderful and very sensitive filmmaker. I think when this film finally comes out, it will be special.”

Rampal has also recently finished work on new films by Abbas Mustan and Sunny Leone and made his South Indian film debut with Hari Hara Veera Mallu, Pawan Kalyan’s latest big-budget film. After several delays due to strikes in the Telugu film industry, the film has just resumed filming in Hyderabad, India.

“It was fantastic to see the unity they have among themselves in the South,” Rampal said of the strikes. “The pandemic changed a lot of things and they wanted to band together and impose some rules and guidelines.”

Rampal’s move south after 21 years working in Mumbai’s Hindi-language film industry popularly known as Bollywoodis a sign of the shifting powers within Indian film culture.

As reported by Deadline earlier this summerfilms from South Indian film industries, such as the KGF in Kannada language: chapter 2 and the Telugu language RRR broke box office records in India and abroad. Conversely, only a small number of Hindi-language films — namely, The Kashmir Files, Gangubai Kathiawadiand horror comedy Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 – have performed well this year, as an alarming number of titles with big stars and high expectations have struggled at the box office even though Indian cinemas have been open without Covid restrictions for several months.

“It hasn’t been as easy as one might have expected or imagined to get people back into theaters,” Rampal said of the change.

“The audience in India has changed tremendously over the past three years. The kind of movies they like to see, the movies that are going straight to OTT, and the kind of movies that are just going to be made for the big screen are going to be very different forms of content.

But Rampal does not see these changes as a sign of decadence but rather as an opportunity for reinvention.

“As filmmakers, actors, and anyone who creates, we really need to pull up our socks, put on our thinking caps, and be more connected with audiences,” he says.

“That’s what 21 years in the industry have taught me: don’t build walls but break them down and be more connected with your audience. I think that’s something we missed. We have to ask the public what they really want to see and what is happening in their life. And then bring those stories back to the screen.