KOZHIKODE: A girl child faces a lot of gender discrimination in the school perpetrated by the teachers themselves. That will be the focus of a Malayalam feature film being produced by an all-women team which will be released soon. The film titled ‘Her Day’ is the brainchild of ‘Wings,’ an organisation that fights for the rights of women. The team was inspired to produce the film after listening to the kids of one of their friends. School students Harsha from Perambra and Anjali from Arikode wrote the story and script. The actors are women from different walks of life and students.
Ms Divya Divakar, a school teacher and one of the directors of the film, told DC: “The dedication of our women crew ensured that they were part of something bigger than the film itself. It is in the last stages of production. The film deals with the politics of education system that a girl child encounters daily in a classroom, including separating children based on gender and the attitude of a teacher towards a girl and a boy. Teachers often cultivate a feeling that boys fare better in main subjects and girls in non-academic subjects. Such thinking prompts the students to conform to their respective gender roles, she explained.
Ms P.M. Deepa, a law student who is the other director, said, “we wanted to expose ourselves, our fears, our comforts and our strengths to be creatively transparent. I hope this will help set a precedent for what can be achieved with an all-women crew. It is up to us to be the agents of the change we want to see,” she said. The two locations of the film are Arikode and Peruvannamuzhi. The team had undergone a 15-day crash course in film making from NIKAT, an off-campus centre of C-DIT. Prasanna and Parvathy, members of ‘Wings,’ handled the camera and advocate Sudha Haridwar was the production coordinator.
