A Nation Without Women

Colour, 35 mm
India, France, 2003, 98 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

How does this bitterly satirical vision of the future relate to the shocking drop in the female population of the Indian countryside which has taken place in recent times? According to statistics from UNESCO, the number of Indian women has fallen by approximately 50 million due to the murder of new-born girls who, for a family living in the clutch of traditional prejudices, are a burden. The village of Matrubhoomi, which director Manish Jha dreamed up for the purposes of his film, is inhabited exclusively by men who satisfy their lust with pornography, transvestitism, homosexuality and violence. The craving for women is intense, but the older of them have died and the younger women were brutally and senselessly killed at birth. The fact that, for the first time in fifteen years, a real wedding is to take place, doesn’t change the situation. The villager Pratap cannot resist an enticing offer to marry off his carefully hidden daughter Kalki to five brothers. What will happen when the girl, permanently abused by her brutish husbands (and their father), eventually builds up a relationship with one of the brothers?  

About the director

TManish Jha (b. 1978, Bihar, India) graduated in English from Delhi University and began to work as an assistant director in TV, where he has a number of TV series to his credit. When he became thoroughly tired of shooting soap operas he decided to make the short A Very Very Silent Film, which won the Jury’s Prize at the IFF in Cannes 2002. Matrubhoomi is his feature film debut as scriptwriter and director. He was inspired to make the film after reading a number of articles about a village in Gujarati, where the number of women had decreased to the extent that it was a very real problem for single men.