Cinema has always been a reflection of the society. No matter what the language is, the movie’s universal subject and human emotions have managed to grab a lot of attention from not just movie buffs but also those who have studied it as a subject.
One such recently released movie isParched that travelled to 24 international film festivals and bagged 18 awards. Before its India release last week, the movie was already a hit and running successfully in countries like France, Belgium, The Netherlands, the US, Mexico, Spain and Colombia.
Talking about what makes this movie a hit, director leena Yadav says: “The language of emotion is so much beyond spoken language. We first screened the movie in Toronto International Film Festival and on the second day of the movie screening, five countries had already bought the film for its distribution. Though the film is set in the rural village, a lot of audience from international festivals and friends across the world found this film very relatable. Many of them said that they knew someone who went through the same situation and even those who themself experienced harassment. The connect that this film has built is overwhelming,” Yadav says who has directed Shabd and Teen Patti before and has worked on many international projects.
Surveen Chawla, who has played the role of Bijli, a sex worker, feels that unlike urban women who hide about her sexual harassment and oppression, village women discuss among each other.
“Village women talk unabashedly with their friends about sex and share their sexual experiences and physical tortures by their men. Their conversation makes them liberal in their thoughts. But women in the city would rather brush it under the carpet,” Chawla says.
While filming Chawla’s erotic dance number in a village in Rajasthan, many villagers turned aggressive and started climbing up the stage. “A lot of the story started playing out for real. The whole concept of dance company in North India where the women dance erotically in front of thousand men, was such a huge sign of sexual regression. We saw the same sexual regression during filming the dance sequence. The villagers got violent. We had to call the assistants to barricade them. After three days, the neighbouring villagers came and banged on the entrance door of our sets shouting ‘Bijli chaiye humko’. For 15 days, we had to keep the men away from the shoots,” Yadav recalls.
Bijli became the talk of the town. “There was a cute little girl who used to come to the shoots and became friendly with all of us. She never met Bijli so one day I told her to come with me, let me introduce you to Bijli. She said maine sunna hai unke bare me. Papa ne ghar pe bataya thha (laughs),” she adds.
The movie had to face a lot of roadblocks right from its conceptualisation to bringing it to releasing it on big screens.
“I had to make this film anyhow but getting it financed was a huge challenge. That’s when Ajay Devgn came on board and gave us money. He believed in the story and attached his name to this film to give it more weight-age. All our problems turned into beautiful solutions.
“From international technicians to actors like Tannishtha Chatterjee, Radhika Apte, Surveen Chawla and Adil Hussain, these people came on board looking at its quality good content and were not apprehensive about Box Office collection,” Yadav tells you.
Then the movie got leaked online and its pirated copies were sold. “This is the reality which has been happening world over. It’s very painful for us to see the film getting leaked. In India, if we say we love films and this is what we are doing to it, then the industry should have to step out. It’s time for the audience to make a choice whether they respect art and watch it in theatres or go for leaked version,” Yadav says.