Sumedha Chaudhury
Ranchi, Oct 11
Touched by the pain of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) among young girls, Bollywood writer, producer and director Anil Ramchandra Sharma hailing from Dhanbad has made a short film ‘Zamistaan’ which is to be released during the Jharkhand National Film Festival 2019 (JNFF) scheduled at Jamshedpur from October 16 to 18.
Sharma’s last directed film ‘Bedaad’ based on sexual abuse of men received special mention by festival staff in 6° Life After Oil International Film Festival 2019 in Italy on Septemener 21. With Zamistaan he wants to urge Prime Minister Narendra Modi to abolish this custom wherein a young girl has to undergo a process that intentionally alter or causes injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
Notably, World Health Organisation claims FGM, a violation of human rights of girls and women.
Relating this fact, Sharma informed, “India is among the countries where FGM is still practiced and considered to violate the right of a female by restricting her from certain pleasures of life. I was pained by this method and thought of making a half an hour movie in order to spread awareness on the health hazards due to this practice.”
He is aiming to develop Zamistaan into a full length feature film after JNFF.
Zamistaan’s pre-production was a challenging phase with the team tackling with public during the movie shoot for a span of five days as people around could sense the theme.
“To make Zamistaan an authentic base, we also included short YouTube video clippings of activists who had earlier raised this relevant issue,” he added.
Meanwhile, Poetess cum Social Activist Lata Haya who inspired Sharma in developing the story and screenplay narrated the purpose saying women who cooperated in making the short film were themselves victimized by FGM but requested not to reveal their real identity.
“Zamistaan is a small effort to aware the society that it affects the health of women in the name of so called custom. We will further move to National Commission for Women to abolish it similar to Triple Talaq since FGM is nowhere mentioned in any religious book,” quoted Haya, also, the producer-partner of Zamistaan.
