Adil Hussain's film gathers support from UNFPA

After bagging a National Award for Best English Film and receiving acclaim at international film festivals, 'Lessons In Forgetting', starring Adil Hussain (Life Of Pi and English Vinglish) has secured support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The film, an adaptation of Anita Nair’s book, highlights issues of sex selection, gender-based violence and its repercussions.
A press conference was held in Delhi recently to announce the association between the film and the UNFPA. Adil, who plays the father of an 18-year-old girl, said, “(For the role) I had to find a way out of my upbringing as a male chauvinist to be able to find a compassionate and genuine space in me with that much respect for women. They deserve more respect than we men give them. I once told my father that my mother can do all the things that you have done for me, if she wants to. But what she has done for me, you never can. I think that’s why women are kept at an inferior station by men, because men are scared.”
Admitting to having had a ‘traditional Indian upbringing’ and referring to his male chauvinistic role in English Vinglish, the actor said, “You can’t hide from the world what you actually are in any form of art.”
Fredereika Meijer of the UNFPA said, “The issue was so touchy that I was curious. India has 908 girls to 1,000 boys. Nearly 100 are missing somewhere. What you see in the film is how society is crumbling between modern and traditional values.” After the Nirbhaya gang rape case, the movie’s director Unni Vijayan feels, social issues like this need to be highlighted more often by the film media. “I’d request famous directors and actors to make films on this subject to prevent another generation from thinking the way the present one does,” he said.
By - Tarini Peshawaria