It's my right to smoke: Rayhana Obermeyer

Thiruvananthapuram: ‘Avalkoppam’ (With Her) was a phrase that divided Malayalam film industry into two. When Algerian filmmaker Rayhana Obermeyer was told about its context – the assault of a Malayalam female actor and the alleged involvement of male actor Dileep – she said she was not surprised. “It is difficult for women working in the field of cinema or art for that matter to do their daily jobs. This is true everywhere in the world. The biggest directors and producers are almost always men. It is the women who are under duress,” she said.

Her film ‘I Still Hide to Smoke’ is about a woman’s desires in a man’s world. Set in Algiers of 1995, the film tells the tale of a masseuse living in a country ruled by Islamic fundamentalists. “We did not have to wear hijab in the 1980s. When I was young, I wanted to look different, and wore hijab. Then my parents scolded me. A decade later, my parents scolded my younger sister when she told them that she did not want to wear it.”

It is doubtful whether her film can be screened in her homeland Algeria, in the near future. “My movie is forbidden in my country, because I speak about women who express freely. They respect women if she wears the hijab. Anyone who wears pants or shirts with half sleeves is considered a prostitute,” she said. She said that a woman who smokes will be thought to have bad morals. “But smoking is for everyone, man or woman,” she said.  She fled the country in 2000, following terrorist attacks in which her many friends got killed.