Jayant Digambar Somalkar’s Sthal (A Match, in Marathi), which has been selected in the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), is a solid, raw and powerful film. It plays in the Discovery section of TIFF, in a record-making year, when 14 Indian, South Asian and South Asian Diaspora films have been selected at the festival. In fact, this is Somalkar’s debut feature, after his strong short Iyatta (Class) and the TV series Guilty Minds, a legal drama series on Amazon Prime, 2022. Shefali Bhushan is co-director, co-writer and producer on the series, and his wife.

Sthal comments on a tradition that continues to be common in many Indian communities—where a girl is routinely paraded before a series of potential grooms, scrutinised like an object to be bought and sold. Name? Mother’s clan? Date of birth? Height? Studies? Subject? Can you cook? Hobbies? etc. But the boys are never asked a single question that would enable the questioner to gauge his worthiness for marriage. The gender equation here is an owner-slave relationship. After the humiliating quiz, she has to serve them a snack (usually one she has cooked, like batata pohe), or water, then touch all the men’s feet, including her potential suitors. The boy’s side promise to get back to the family about their decision—but rarely do, and if they do, in the case of Savita Daulatrao Wandhare of Dongargaon, it’s rejection after rejection. Savita herself is studying for her final year BA in Sociology and preparing for her MPSC exam that would enable her to become an officer, but the boys in the village, including her brother Mangesh, are mainly loutish, no-hopers, yet her parents obsess over her marriage. Her mother can’t understand her need to study further, “as she will get married anyway”.