Anubhav Sinha opens up about the challenge of capturing a female perspective as a male writer-director on Assi, a film centered on sexual violence. Reuniting with Pannu after Thappad (2020) was a deliberate choice. The director knew she’d front the film for the right reasons
A still from ‘Assi’.
In its first 10 seconds, the trailer of Assi tells you a chilling statistic -- that there are 80 reported rape cases in India every day. “That’s one every 20 minutes. By the time you finish this interview, one more would have happened,” director Anubhav Sinha told us, when we met him to discuss his upcoming film that sees Taapsee Pannu as a lawyer, who takes up the case of a sexual assault survivor, essayed by Kani Kusruti.
The statistics disturb him, but what unsettles him more is the normalisation. “This story has crossed my eyes so many times through my life that it became ‘normal’. I was not okay with that.” He is careful to clarify that Assi is not based on one headline. “It’s not a specific story I picked up from a newspaper. I think it’s made up of all the stories I’ve ever read. I would see the headline and not even feel anything. That scared me.”
Sinha locates rape culture within the structure of patriarchy itself. “We come from a very patriarchal society. There are two kinds of criminal acts. One is the hardcore, dominant, violent act. The other is the sly act, the sleazy one that happens inside homes, with people you know. Those are the ones mostly never reported.” The former becomes an FIR because it often leaves behind a body; the latter survives in silence. “Committed to a woman who wouldn’t speak. Hopefully," he says.
Anubhav Sinha
What angers him most is the generational failure. “Mothers tell their daughters at 13 this will start happening, this is how you deal with it. But men don’t tell their sons. We didn’t bring them up. We didn’t tell them about gender equality. We didn’t tell them that’s another person’s body. You might be attracted to it. You can’t snatch it. I think this film comes from that part in my heart.”
Reuniting with Pannu, he insists, was never about chemistry but intention. “The reason me and Taapsee are making this film is exactly the same. She does these films for the exact same reason I want to make them.”
He has little patience for actors who approach socially conscious cinema as a career strategy. “I meet a lot of actors who want to be in my movies because they think they should want to be in a movie like that. That’s when it doesn’t work for me. It’s too constructed. I won’t see your honesty in it. You will see her honesty through her eyes. Miles into her eyes. Because she believes in it. And she walks the talk.”
‘Mulk’ (2017) and ‘Thappad’ (2020)
If Thappad explored the violence of a single slap within marriage, Assi widens the lens to interrogate the ecosystem that enables sexual violence. Yet Sinha admits that as a man, he entered the writing process at a disadvantage. “Every time me and Gaurav went to write a scene, we were trying to think like a woman. I’m very aware of the fact that I’m not a woman. That was the toughest part for me.” He and his writer Gaurav Solanki were two men in a room attempting to access a lived reality that was not theirs. “I was watching a whole lot of films about women to understand women. To feel like one. I hope it has translated.”
The emotional afterlife of Thappad continues to shape him. “Post that film, I received calls from men and women both who just called to cry. They didn’t tell me their names. They didn’t tell me why. They just cried and said thank you. For me, that response affirmed cinema’s responsibility."
He is blunt about the industry’s shifting priorities. “It’s tough. You don’t get actors because the onus is on box office. A lot of actors would rather be with a big star and be that star’s failure because if it’s a success, their fee goes up. Mid-budget films shrink in the shadow of hyper-masculine spectacles."
And yet, he remains oddly calm this time. “I’ve never felt this confident before. I’m normally a very nervous man. This time, I’m not. Perhaps that confidence comes from what I have heard on the ground. While travelling across cities before announcing the film, I recall strangers asking me, “Why aren’t you making real stories from our world?” A cinema owner even asked, “Why don’t you make a film about rape? So many girls are being raped in India.” Sinha smiles at the memory. “I had already made one. I just hadn’t told him. Let’s talk about it now. It’s an urgent matter.”
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