Mumbai: Mumbai-based Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s 18-minute-long Ghar ki Murgi (Taken for Granted) is part of the international premiere of Half the Sky, an omnibus film featuring shorts directed by five women filmmakers from the BRICS nations, at China’s 2nd Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival. The festival will open on October 11, and marks international film festivals’ pronounced engagement with gender issues this year.
With China's iconic filmmaker, and the force behind the Pingyao festival, Jia Zhangke as its executive producer, the film has representation from women filmmakers from Brazil (Daniela Thomas, Back), Russia (Elizaveta Stishova, Catfishing), India (Ms. Tiwari), China (Liu Yulin, The Dumpling) and South Africa (Sara Blecher, The Measure of a Woman). The 99-minute anthology is in Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Chinese, English and Zulu and was unveiled at the BRICS summit in July this year; its title derives from Mao Zedong’s maxim: ‘Women hold up half the sky.’
Half the Sky is the second BRICS co-production film; the first Where Has the Time Gone (with Jia Zhangke himself, Walter Salles and Madhur Bhandarkar among others on board) came out last year. The BRICS film cooperation plan was initiated by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 8th BRICS summit in Goa.
Ms. Tiwari, who has the popular Nil Battey Sannata and Bareilly ki Barfi behind her, shot her short film in May this year in New Delhi. It stars television and film actor Sakshi Tanwar (Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii, Bade Achche Lagte Hain, Dangal) in the lead role and the screenplay has been written by Ms. Tiwari's filmmaker husband, Nitesh Tiwari (Dangal, Chillar Party, Bhootnath Returns), who has collaborated on the scripts of her previous films as well.
“It is an honour to represent India in an international showcase,” said Ms. Tiwari. “It’s on an important topic. The broad brief was to show women and their place in our society and country and then we could do it in our own style, whether emotional or intellectual.”
Ms. Tiwari's Nil Battey Sannata earlier won acclaim at China’s Silk Road International Film Festival with Swara Bhaskar bagging the best actress award. Nitesh Tiwari’s Dangal has been one of the highest grossing Indian films in China.