While the film industry looks glittery and glamorous from the outside, we all know that there’s a murky reality that surfaces behind blinding camera lights. Many actors have come out and spoken about being sexually exploited and abused during their tenure in films, and all those truths came out during the #MeToo movement. Many actors have also openly spoken about the glaring wage gap in the industry and it’s sickening.
Yesterday was the trailer launch of the upcoming film Guilty, which has been produced by Karan Johar and directed by Ruchi Narain. The producer believes that just because the movie was being directed by a woman is why many male stars refused to star in it.
Talking about this, Narain said, “We were trying to cast a film, and a lot male stars said no. I was so angry. I was talking to Karan, and he told me, ‘There’s really no reason for them to say no to you because the film is really good. The script is really good. You have got a body of work so they should be saying yes, but I have a feeling it could be because they aren’t comfortable working with a woman filmmaker.’”
“I said, ‘I love this film, but I am not going to have a sex change for it.’ The anger of that did fuel me to make this film,” added the Hazaroen Khawishein Aisi writer.
Yes, male and female is still a binary we’re holding on to.
When asked by a journalist whether people have difficulty taking instructions from a woman, Ruchi Narain agreed that things are always different when a woman is in charge compared to a man.
She said, “There is a difference when you are a woman and are heading something. One forms a way to deal with those things. I wrote the seed of the idea with Kanika (Dhillon) and Atika (Chohan). We were discussing issues which women face on a day-to-day basis. It is different for a woman and for a man which you learn by observation. At the end of the day, when you want to do something, we all find our own ways to do it.”
When asked if she is sad that women have to find ways to achieve something while men get it easier because of their gender, Narain said that both genders make different arguments when it comes to inequality, which is also something she has tried to explore through Guilty.
She added, “I was always aware there is going to be another side. If you talk to men, they also sometimes feel that women get an easy pass, but we would be like, excuse me, that doesn’t happen. There are two sides to an argument, which I wanted to capture in this film.”
Guilty explores different truths and different aspects of the same incident when a college girl accuses the college heartthrob of rape.
Watch the trailer here:
Honestly, sometimes when I hear things like ‘men still don’t like taking instructions from women’, it puts things into perspective for me. Yes, we’re taking steps towards equality. Yes, the government is taking initiatives to bridge the gender gap but what do we do about the inherent societal patriarchy that consumes us whole all the time? As people, we need to come together and look within ourselves to break this cycle of misogyny, because there’s really no other way.
And to the men who don’t want to work with someone just because of their gender, here’s a reminder: we don’t live in the 1950s anymore!
Featured Image: YouTube
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