Afwaah

Sudhir Mishra’s film delves into the contours of violence, apathy and the ever-blurring distinction between what is real and what is fake. Afwaah, director Sudhir Mishra’s latest film, holds a mirror to our times, helmed by Nawazuddin Sidiqqui, Bhumi Pednekar, Sumeet Vyas and Sharib Hashmi in critical roles. A young woman from a political family flees a marriage (a political alliance) she is being forced into, as she abhors her fiance’s politics of polarisation. She comes across a good Samaritan who tries to help her. Her crime: rejecting an ecosystem of hate. His crime: he is from a minority. The situation snowballs, assuming a horrific dimension all too real in our times – weaponisation of hate through fake news for political and electoral mobilisation. The writing of the film, by Sudhir Mishra, Shiva Shankar Bajpai and Nisarg Mehta, is deeply political and aware, with an empathetic gaze.

An angry lament that throws into sharp relief some of the greatest fault lines of India today, Sudhir Mishra’s Afwaah is a gut punch. The film minces no words, and shows us how our ability to reason is muted, how easy it is to orchestrate hate, how apathetic we are as a people – across divisions of privilege – and how acutely we all sit at the precipice of getting lynched, caused by just one text, one share, one video at a time. Apathy is deeply entwined with power, and this emerges across various ideas of power in the film. Whether it is the power the local feudalistic young politician wields over his goons and the police officer, or what the same police officer holds over his subordinate who he instructs and controls both sexually and at work, or the power she holds over a hapless victim turning to law and order for help. The chain of power and oppression is starkly visible, and critically so. The power a man is expected to hold over a woman – such that shooting her seems justified to his loyal goon. The power that an underconfident goon can hold if he points the gun at his friends and bullies. The power that a coward sitting behind a screen holds, to manipulate an entire city, inciting riots. The cyclic nature of power, its headiness, and what it turns people into – with no answerability – is acute in the film. This termite-infested system, the nexus of power and its apathy, is exposed in each frame.

Genres:Drama, Action, Adventure

Director:Mani Rathnam

Cast:Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Bhumi Pednekar