Filmmaker Anubhuti Kashyap’s Netflix movie Accused started streaming recently. The film, which stars Konkona Sen Sharma and Pratibha Rannta, is a queer take on the MeToo movement. Anubhuti got talking about the film and more in an interview with us.
The MeToo movement seems to have fizzled out in Bollywood and India. Your thoughts on this?
Yes, you're right. The Me Too movement seems to have fizzled out in Bollywood. I would say not just Bollywood but all across, I mean every other industry as well. And not just here but everywhere. And that I feel it is true for any kind of a movement or big change that happens. Somehow, today we as a society are such people that we just move on from one thing to another a little too quickly. That's unfortunate that it happened with the MeToo movement also. And I hope it doesn't disappear entirely. Some good things did come out of it. Certain processes were put in place and I'm happy about that. I just hope it could have led to some other stronger changes. I wish it hadn't fizzled out, at least not so quickly and not entirely. But it seems to have been going in that direction.
Your film Accused looks at the MeToo from the other side. How did you hit on this rather radical idea of a woman being accused of sexual harassment and that too by women?
I actually have to give credit where it's due. The radical idea was given to me by Netflix. Their creative team actually came up with this idea, saying that we've never seen a film in India, whether sexual perpetrator or the person accused is a woman. So would that interest me? They brought it to me and the writers and we all just loved the idea because it was radical, because it was not done. And we all just latched on to it. And then it all started from there. We started to research, first of all, whether something like this happens. And we found there were enough reported cases and that we should build a story on that. And we arrived at a story.
Konkona Sen Sharma plays a woman professional wrongly accused of misconduct. How did you avoid her projecting her as a mere victim?
Thematically, the point of the film which we wanted to convey was how we are very quick to judge people. You know, the moment some news comes or some sensational news comes where somebody is accused of some crime, we are so quick to judge that person and call them a criminal if that person is a very unlikable person. And if we like that person, we immediately absolve her. So, what I wanted to say was in this film, it is about the perceptions, the biases with which we look at people and incidents. And all we're trying to say was just examine your own biases, reflect on them a little bit, sit with them before being so quick to jump into conclusions.
Was Konkona Sen Sharma your first choice for the accused protagonist’s role?
Yes, absolutely. First choice, not just mine, but from Netflix and Dharma Productions. The moment her name came up, we all just quickly resonated with it. We went to Konkona first. We narrated the story and she very quickly said yes. So there was just no second option.
Why are both your films, Accused and Doctor G before that, themed in gynaecology?
It's very tricky. Honestly, you know, I tried my best to make sure this film does not fit gynaecology or does not even go anywhere near the medical profession. So, we tried to give our characters all sorts of different professions initially. And kind of other things somewhat worked, but the story fit best within the gynaecology department eventually. Because, you know, it's such a place where people are so vulnerable. Patients are so vulnerable with their doctors. They're so exposed. And hence it gives us such good room for telling a story where a lot of grey lines are there or, you know, those lines are crossed.
And anyway, largely like overall medical world is such a high risk life and death situation. So, I felt it just gave our story more weight, more gravity. Yeah, finally, that is why I gave in to gynaecology as a profession. But between me and the writers, there was a lot of tussle initially. Yeah, but unfortunately, it so happened and I hope I don't get stereotyped with it. And I'm going to try my best that my next one or two or at least five films don't have anything to do with gynaecology.
Why London? Good question. Yes, we did shoot the film in Poland for, of course, (due to) budget reasons and logistical reasons. But we tried to carefully shoot it in places where it could pass off as outskirts of London or somewhere in UK. Why did we base the film in UK? It was actually for two reasons. One, because at the centre of our story, the characters have a queer marriage. We could have had a queer marriage in India. But we could have just gone with a simple relationship. But the thing was, we did not want any sort of commentary or any sort of issue related to their being queer. You know, everything in the story we wanted to tell was about these characters and what happens to them and what happens to the relationship. But we just completely wanted to, I wouldn't say avoid, but we didn't just want to deal with their being queer as an issue. Because often you have to do that and that would have taken so much more screen space.
And the fact that by not commenting about their relationship, it's just got normalized in the film, I feel. And I feel that opens the film up to more people, you know, makes them more accepting of queer relationships. So, that was one reason, basically to avoid any sort of special gaze, special spotlight or special commentary on their being queer. A second reason was when we were researching, we found that there are more such cases reported in the US, UK or Australia, where women have been accused of sexual misconduct. There are some in India as well, but there are more in the Western nations. And which is why I think we kind of decided it works overall to pace the story.
More Pages: Accused Box Office Collection , Accused Movie Review
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