Image courtesy: ndtv.com The movie Rashmi Rocket highlights the tribulation female athletes have to go through with gender testing when their bodies are labeled as ‘mardaana’ or ‘conventinally feminine’. The movie stars Taapsee Pannu in the lead role, who admittedly googled the ‘gender testing’ as she was unaware of the concept. The movie will be released on ZEE5 on October 15.
The sports drama aims to highlight the archaic gender tests. It questions women’s bodies, tagging them as ‘mard ki body’. The story is directed by Akarsh Khurana. It unfolds the story of a small-town girl, who had to overcome obsolete societal barriers, to become a national athlete. However, she is impeded when she is asked to go through a gender test.
Taapsee said “I went back and did a lot of research on it and saw the extent of the problem happening only to females. So that drove me even more that I need to be the vehicle to present this problem which is not being discussed about and is very much present for years till now as latest as of this Tokyo Olympics. It had to be brought about.”
Priyanshu Painyuli plays Taapsee’s husband in the movie, also admitted to not being aware of the issue of gender testing. “I got to know about the gender testing issue through Rashmi Rocket. While shooting, I checked with our director Akarsh, that are we taking creative liberty for the movie or is this truly happening and I was shocked to know that this is truly happening. We are hoping that through our movie, this issue is highlighted to a larger section of the society,” said Priyanshu.
