This is not cinema, but shockingly real

Nudity. Explicit acts. Criminal gangs. Midnight knocks. Online harassment…

The story is disturbing, or rather, shocking.

Sadly, this is not cinema. No, not a crime thriller. This is real.

The report of the Justice K Hema committee, which investigated the working conditions of women in the Malayalam film industry, paints a rather bleak picture.

Still, the report’s findings have elicited mixed reactions. While some expressed shock, others sighed with resignation, calling the findings “an open secret.”

And as always, the political game of blame began.

However, such a commission is the first of its kind in India. It was set up by the Kerala government after the sexual harassment of a leading actress in 2017 to investigate the working conditions of women in the Malayalam film industry. The commission submitted its report to the government in 2020.

The Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), founded in 2017, has been instrumental in the creation of the committee. It is a story of resilience. A different story.

Four years later, the distribution of the commission’s report was marked by significant redactions; notably, 55 pages of personal accounts of sexual harassment were blacked out. Despite this, the report was made accessible to select journalists under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, revealing only a fraction of its findings. Significantly, 13 pages and 30 paragraphs were deleted from the publicly available document.

As mentioned, the report presents a damning indictment of the widespread and systematic sexual harassment that affects women professionals in the Malayalam film industry. The committee has identified at least 17 different forms of exploitation experienced by women in 30 different categories. These include overt sexual demands for access, sexual harassment and various forms of physical and emotional abuse.

In a shocking revelation, the report details instances of coercion in which actresses were forced to perform nude scenes and explicit acts, often with little or no prior warning. One particular case involves a director who, after three months of preparation and filming, demanded that an actress perform nude scenes and a lip lock. Despite her objections, she was forced to expose her body. The next day, she was further pressured into a bathtub scene, prompting her to leave the film and forfeit her unpaid fee.