Raj Amit Kumar’s hugely controversial film about a lesbian runaway bride in Delhi and terrorist’s torture of a pacifist Islamic intellectual in New York has been banned outright by India’s Censor Board. But the director is undeterred as he screens the film all over the world.
Raj screened the though-provoking film at the Indian Institute Of Technology in Mumbai on May 8 to an immensely attentive and responsive audience. He says, “The screening was a private one, for students of the IIT only. There were 400 students present and everybody was fully engaged and absolutely loved the film. The Q&A lasted longer than an hour.”
Seeing the positive response to the film, Raj wonders at the wisdom of preventing youngsters from seeing cinema about the harsh truth of life. “The Censor decides that these kids don’t know how to handle tough subjects and films! Our young breed is very aware of the world and its reality. They don’t need to protected and mollycoddled.”
Raj now takes Unfreedom for a screening in New York on May 29. “Any film can be screened publicly in the US without an American censor certificate.My Unfreedom has the freedom to be screened fearlessly on American soil. But not in my own land,” rues Amit.