IFFI 2023: 5 films showcased issues faced by children

MAYA ROSE FERNANDES

This is the second year of UNICEF’s partnership with the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) at IFFI.

Zafrin Chowdhury, Chief of Communication, Advocacy and Partnerships at UNICEF, spoke about how the global humanitarian and development organisation for children looks for different ways to engage with and sensitise people about child rights. They’re excited by this collaboration because of the film industry’s reach and power to influence positive changes through the screen.

Among this year’s film selection are two National Film award winners: Damu (1996) and Gandhi & Co. (2022). The first is a Bengali family drama directed by Raja Sen and the second a Gujarati coming-of-age film directed by Manish Saini. The selection has been rounded off with three international films.

Peacock Lament (2022), from Sri Lanka, by Sanjeewa Pushpakumara, is based on his own life and follows the story of a young man from Sri Lanka who gets involved in trafficking babies from unwanted pregnancies to foreigners in order to raise enough money for his sister’s life-saving heart surgery.

Singo (2022), directed by Alireza Mohammadi Rouzbahany from Iran, sheds light on the many hidden roles of women and girls in a society where they are often overlooked, through the story of a little girl who decides to save four precious horseshoe crabs from being sold.

For the Sake of Ava (2023), also from Iran, is directed by Mohsen Seraji, and seeks to highlight the challenges and resilience of young women artists pursuing their dreams in the face of adversity.

In Chowdhury’s own words, “The movies portray some of the difficult issues children face. But, more significantly, they portray children not as passive victims but empowered with agency.”

This year, as well as curating these five films, the UNICEF-NFDC collaboration featured a panel discussion of the depiction of violence against children and women in popular cinema. Panelists discussed the powerful impact of film on children as viewers and, also, how child actors needed to be better taken care of on film sets.

The panel had award-winning actor Shweta Basu Prasad, once a child actor herself, talking about how contemporary child actors seemed to be missing out on their childhood. They were more focused on comparing social media follower numbers. The panelists talked about best practices on sets to ensure children got an education and worked less hours than adult actors to ensure that their rights were met, but agreed that more work needed to be done in this area, not only with the film industry, but also with parents. 

Talking about portrayals on screen, Prasad said, “As a film-maker, the intention behind the choice of how you are going to portray a child or woman is important. It’s such a responsible job – the choice of dialogue, of narrative structure, of characters you’re writing – you have no idea how it can impact someone sitting in the audience.”

Chowdhury reminded the audience that, “Violence isn’t just physical. It’s also emotional, psychological, sexual. Hate speech, discrimination, these are also violence according to the WHO definition. They are extremely detrimental and leave deep scars on children.”

“The manifestation of violence in a little child’s mind is going to remain manifested for the rest of their life,” said actor and producer Vani Tripathi Tikoo, while Neerja Shekhar from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting explained how “Film certification was amended this year to include more age categories. Now, we have U-Universal, UA 7+, UA 13+, UA 16+ and UA 18+, to help parents assess which movies their children can watch.”

Chowdhury said that, “There are good practices in the industry that can be replicated. It’s important that we move away from portraying children as victims. There are instruments and laws in place, as Neerja mentioned, but there has to be societal responsibility and trust as well, and this can come about through social and behavioural change. That’s where both the ‘source’ (the content-makers) and the ‘receiver’ (audiences, children, families) create the demand by giving them these alternative stories that are not only artistically viable but also commercially viable. We cannot subject the child to violence on the screen – it will desensitize and normalize them to it.”