- Release Date: – 05/05/2023
- Cast: – Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Siddhi Idnani, Sonia Balani
- Director: – Sudipto Sen
The Kerala Story chronicles the journey of Shalini Unnikrishnan (Adah Sharma) as she transitions from being a charming and vivacious soul growing up in God’s Own country to her ending up as a sex slave in one of ISIS’s camps and losing herself completely in the abyss that she finds her life spiralling into. What was it that made a simple, ambitious and mild-mannered girl take such drastic steps? Was it love? Was it brainwashing? Was it her hatred for her own religion or was it something else? Director Sudipto Sen and creative director Vipul Amrutlal Shah attempt to find answers to these questions in their film that constantly feels like being based on actual events rather than being built on “WhatsApp forwards” and figments of its creator’s imagination as many mainstream media outlets want you to believe.
A relevant and important story that needed telling: –
The film has either met with complete silence from the mainstream Bollywood fraternity — even though it is produced by one of its bigger producers/directors — or is being lambasted for its director’s comment that 32000 girls have been poached out of Kerala and have ended up in ISIS camps. While this assumption feels far-fetched and unreal, it cannot be denied that coerced and forceful conversions have always been a thing in India. Even if a single girl has been forcefully converted and taken out of India to serve ISIS, it is a matter that needs the attention of law enforcement. When told with honesty, it can also make for a necessary and poignant cinematic retelling. In my opinion, that is exactly what The Kerala Story is.
Wonderfully structured and intelligible narrative: –
The film’s story is so well structured and the three primary characters are so wonderfully envisioned that you are almost instantaneously hooked by the narrative. A Hindu, a Catholic and an atheist are targeted in a similar fashion by a recruiter for ISIS who is pretending to be a student in a nursing college. The reaction to the advances of the recruiter is different from the three girls but the end result is not so much different as the slightest drop of guard not only rocks their boats permanently but sets them on such a destructive path that either ends with their respective lives lost or scars and separates them from their families forever.
The way the recruiters are shown targeting the girl’s vulnerabilities and the dialogues that are used in important conversations feel real and well-known. While how the three girls react to the recruiter may feel odd and unwarranted to many with stronger foundations and support systems, it isn’t uncommon for naïve and simple girls to fall prey to such advances.
Once the girls are lured into the trap, the actual game begins and the film brings out the brutality of this game in such vivid details that it will be difficult for many to sit through. The fact that we know from the very beginning that there will be no happy ending to this story only makes the looming disaster for the girls that much more tragic for a viewer like me. There are moments too when the girls act out so stupidly and treat their parents — who are trying to save them — with such cruelty that I felt like the girls should suffer for these actions. Sadly, when they finally have their respective realizations and their expression of that broke my heart and made me sympathize with them.
Sudipto Sen’s direction is on point: –
Sudipto Sen’s direction of the film is absolutely on point. He is able to create a gripping narrative that violently oscillates between the present and the past and yet remains lucid in both timelines. He is also successful in impacting us with a never-ending barrage of masterfully created set pieces that not only bring the shocking brutality of ISIS, Taliban etc to life but also show us how they are able to brainwash, recruit and ultimately destroy girls from around the world systematically. The film has a lot to show. Even the backgrounds of the frames in his film speak out loud through posters, graffiti and wall art. One needs to look closely to notice these subtle nuances of the film but for the ones who are paying attention, they are right up there to be seen and understood.
The performances by the ensemble cast are noteworthy: –
Another aspect of Sudipto Sen’s direction that I appreciated immensely was his handling of the actors. He extracted one of the best performances that I have ever seen Adah Sharma deliver. She is breathtakingly real and heartbreaking in the film. The things that her character is shown enduring and how she emotes in scenes where she is willfully manipulated by people or tortured by men who are all-powerful and control her life are heart-wrenching. Adah truly feels the character and acts her heart out making the character tragic beyond belief. Sen is able to extract similar performances from the rest of the ensemble cast. While a few actors overdo their parts in minor sequences, the rest of the performances remain rooted in the realistic and subtle treatment of the story and the characters.
Yogita Bihani as Nimah, a catholic who thwarts the advances of the recruiters but eventually meets with a gruesome fate as she is drugged and gang raped for days, turns in a fantastic performance. I thoroughly enjoyed her searing monologue towards the end of the film. She does disappear for a while after the interval but when she returns, she lights up the screen with her electric presence and wonderful performance. Siddhi Idnani as Geetanjali is proficient. The way her character metamorphosed towards the end of the film and her last dialogue with her tormentor elevated the impact of her performance for me. She also does exceedingly well in another scene where she is tasked to spit on her father in a hospital to prove her dedication to Islam.
Sonia Balani as the evil recruiter Asifa is perfectly hateable. One thing that I loved about the character was how subtle and vulnerable she was shown to be. This not only makes her that much more hateable but also shows us how deeply the terrorist organizations get into their task of recruitment and how much attention to detail they give thereby controlling and dictating every aspect of their recruiter’s action and also guiding her in the best way possible.
The bad guys are fleshed out and we understand their motivations: –
The bad guys in the film are also under tremendous pressure to get the three girls to Syria. In a poignant scene, one of the terrorist leaders questions the ability and manhood of the men involved with the three women as they are unable to rule over them easily. As the film progresses, we see the men under more duress and one of them ends up exposing himself to one of the girls in his bid to force her to travel to Syria. It is elements like these that make The Kerala Story even more shocking and impactful.
An inconvenient truth that needs to be accepted: –
A large portion of the media is lambasting this film for being malicious propaganda. This is eerily similar to how these people were reacting to The Kashmir Files, a film that documented the plight of the Kashmiri Hindus. While they are targeting the extravagant figure of 32000 girls being poached out of Kerala and sent to ISIS as recruits by the director to discredit the film, I was more concerned with the statement and the accounts that were shared at the end of the film. Even if a single forced or coerced conversion has happened, it is a matter that should have been dealt with sternly. It is also a fact that news of forced conversions is not new in this part of the country and hence to shrug the film off as mere propaganda is bizarre.
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Evidently well researched and based on numerous true incidents: –
Sudipto Sen apparently worked with over 300 hours of video interviews with victims and their families and innumerable similar accounts and built his screenplay from it. The film does feel authentic and many of the things that we see here feel similar to news that we have seen or heard in national and international news. The cases shown here can also be drawn parallel to many cases reported from Europe and America. Another very good film on the same subject was the 2018 film, Profile, by Timur Bekmambetov based on French journalist Anna Erelle’s book “In the Skin of a Jihadist” about her investigation into the recruitment of young women by ISIS. You might want to check that out as well.
Final words: – The Kerala Story is an essential watch. It is not for the faint-hearted as some of the graphic violence and torture that the women are shown enduring will remain etched in the memories of the viewers for a long time. Interestingly, it is also a film that I believe should.
The views expressed in this article are that of the reviewer and do not reflect EastMojo’s position
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