Caption for photo – This is Leena Yadev, director of “Parched”, the Opening Night film for the film festival.

PARCHED directed by Leena Yadav (India)
Nominated for Best Screenplay, “Parched” written by Leena Yadav, was the Opening Night film for the Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival to great success. It is a riot of colour by virtue of being shot in a Rajasthan village location. We follow the lives of four women who are connected by friendship and family ties and by the most powerful thing of all, ‘sister-hood’ as women, living in a world controlled by men.
Their only chance is to bond together and support one another.
They are all in different situations. Tanishtha Chatterjee plays Rani, a young widow of only 32, whose teenage son is just married to a fourteen year old girl. Her neighbor is a physically abused frequently by her husband, and her best friend is the village prostitute, who works from a tent at the carnival on the outskirts of the village.
Indian tradition is still oppressing women in the remote areas, even if the cities now contain many highly educated, and liberated Indian women. The screenplay contains talk of matters sexual, the sort of thing that women might laugh about together or say to one another, when men are not around. It has somewhat shocked audiences at home, but the Brisbane audience loved it, and this sort of innocent fun talk about ‘getting off’ by the vibration of sitting on your cellphone in your jeans pocket, served to bring them closer to these oppressed characters. It contains powerful and moving moments too, when the things these four women must bear are shocking to behold.
Leena Yadav pointed out that the sexist talk and behavior of the men and even abuse are a universal problem, (not just happening in Indian villages). She said, “Now in some places people have learned to hide things better.” She also noted “Parts of our lives (as women) are not represented on screen. There is a lack of women’s sexual politics on screen.”
With the content of this film being unusually daring for Indian cinema, Leena had a long battle with the censors, but eventually, it was passed un-cut, but had a very limited release in India. However, the battle with the censors took so long that it had already screened in Western Europe and been pirated and was being sold on the streets of India, by sellers of porn films, This categorization was just because of a pure and innocent scene featuring bare skin and closeness between two women after one has been severely beaten and has injuries, and her friend is caring for her.
The budget was small, but Leena said that she ‘reached for the stars’ when it came to choosing the people she wanted to work with. The film looks stunning on screen and it’s no accident because there are three Oscar winners in the crew, including the Director of Cinematograpy.
When Leena served on the APSA jury, a few years back, she became inspired to get the project into production. She already had written the screenplay. She was happy to see it come back home so to speak, by screening as the Opening Night Film of the film festival. It has already won 18 international awards and screened in 25 international film festivals. Box office was great in France and Spain, and it’s still in the early stages of it’s career.

Text and photo by Cynthia Webb
Copyright December 2016