Moumita Chakraborty (BOMBAY TIMES; July 5, 2019)

Swara Bhasker and Divya Dutta have been roped in to play romantic partners in the film, Sheer Khurma, directed by Faraz Arif Ansari. Faraz, who also directed India’s first silent LGBTQIA+ film Sisak, describes the movie as “a gentle story, with a backdrop of religion and sexuality.”

He tells us, “The idea of Sheer Khurma came to me while I was travelling to various film festivals for the last two years with Sisak. I realised that everyone is talking about gay men or bisexual men, but nobody was really talking about women in the LGBTQIA+ community. There are very few films from the LGBTQIA+ spectrum that talk about women as protagonists. Other than that, nobody is really talking about religion and sexuality, which I think is imperative, given the world we live in. I think religion, by default, becomes a part of our social-political understanding in the world we live in today, and I wanted to make a gentle story, with a backdrop of religion and sexuality.” The film, which also stars Surekha Sikri, traces the journey of a queer woman searching for a sense of belonging, an identity and acceptance from her family.

The director says that it wasn’t easy to get this project rolling. The first stumbling block was finding a producer to finance the subject, as most wanted a film on male LGBTQIA+ protagonists, rather than female. “I was reaching out to a lot of production studios in India, and all of them had one thing to say — ‘We are only looking at films that have a male protagonist’,” he says.

The hypocrisy, says Faraz, isn’t limited to producers alone. Even actors and filmmakers are complicity in Bollywood’s homophobia.

“I know many leading actors in Bollywood, who have a huge amount of reservations when it comes to playing sexuality that is not mainstream. At a time when inclusivity is a desideratum, Bollywood doesn’t want to make LGBTQIA+ films. It is like, they want to be inclusive, but they don’t really want to be inclusive. If they make one, it is for the heck of it,” says Faraz.

When asked why he zeroed in on Swara and Divya as leads, Faraz replies, “Divya and Swara are two celebrated names in the industry and strong allies of the LGBTQIA+ community. In fact, when I started writing the film, I had Divya in my mind, and already saw her playing this role. The day I finished the script, I put up a status on Instagram saying I need someone to play the role, and Divya was actually the first person to call me. Without even reading the script, she said she wanted to do the film. Swara is someone who is gentle and yet so powerful. There is a certain kind of vulnerability that she has that would win your heart. She is the perfect person to play the character. Both of them never had any reservations about playing a queer or lesbian character, which speaks volumes about who they are as individuals.”

Divya, on her part, shares, “For me, this is not just a film. It’s a story about relationships — including this woman’s with her family and her partner, which is something that needs to be talked about amid all the taboo that exists in our society. I took up this role because I wanted to challenge myself as an actor and discover another side of me. I am in good hands, as I have Swara and Surekha ji as my co-actors, who are equally fabulous. I always wanted to share a screen with them. It is going to be lovely to bring in all the emotions of women who are in this and find a way to strike a balance in society.”