Madhureeta Anand's Kajarya features two women talking about female foeticide. By K Bhardwaj
Two different women characters, one from city and the other from a village, will expose the hypocrisy and misogynistic attitude in our society in Madhureeta Anand’s next titled Kajarya. One character promotes female foeticide while the other, who is a journalist, has a different view of the world. “It is a gripping story. The characters are victims of circumstances and perpetrators of extreme violence,” says the filmmaker who shot the film in parts of Haryana, UP and Delhi. The promo of Kajarya was released at Cannes Film Festival and got rave reviews. Anand, who also happens to be the director of International Digital Film Festival, is planning to release the movie in March, a day after the International Women’s Day. Being a mother of a girl, she is close to the subject. “The day my daughter was born, I understood what it is like to give birth to a girl. You notice so many things when you have a daughter. I came across some silly suggestions. Then came population consensus in 2011 when sex ratio was falling. As a filmmaker, it’s my duty to comment on such trends,” she says.
The director is amazed at Bollywood’s ‘strange silence’ on the serious issue. She is baffled by the “crass” item songs in films today. The trend of having a half-naked girl dancing with 100 men around is something beyond my imagination. They are touting nudity as liberation for women. I don’t advocate the way women are being objectified. Filmmakers promote their films through such songs and earn crores. We are in denial that we are living gender genocide,” she comments.
However, Anand feels that the audience is willing to accept good cinema. “The success of a film like The lunchbox, that earned Rs 10 crore in a week, proves that there are people who want to watch refined cinema,” she observes.
Anand plans three movies after Kajarya. “There is Kotha No 22, based on a prostitute’s life. Maharani is a fiction-period film. last is Do Deewane Shehar Mein,” she tells us.