I look for the humanity in people, however big the politics or oppressive the situation may be, whether it’s subsumed within a human being or between two human beings. I want to help us hold a mirror to ourselves.

Nair frames her artistic and ethical project as a search for the irreducible human element inside political conflict. Rather than treating “politics” as an abstract system, she insists it is lived through bodies, relationships, and everyday moral choices—“within” a person and “between” people. The “mirror” metaphor suggests cinema (and storytelling more broadly) as a reflective instrument: her work aims to prompt self-recognition, discomfort, and accountability in audiences, not simply to depict suffering or take sides. The quote also implies a resistance to dehumanization: even under oppression, she looks for dignity, complexity, and the possibility of empathy without denying structural injustice.