Cannes Film Festival: Kolkata boys’ short film on menstruation in competition

The Cannes Film Festival started on May 16. It will go on till May 27. A short film of Kolkata will be shown there. Last year, Shaunak Sen’s documentary All That Breathes won the L'Oeil d'Or (Golden Eye) award for best documentary at the 75th Cannes Film Festival this year. 

A Marathi film, made by a person from Kolkata, is in the official competition section at the 76th Cannes Film Festival. The film's name is Nehemich. Sakshi Dighi, Bhakti Makarand Athawale, and Gandhara Gulwelkar acted in the film. Many aspects of menstruation will be shown here.

Yudhajit Basu is an alumnus of the Pune Film and Television Institute. The film is jointly written by him and Prithwijoy Ganguly. The film will compete with 14 fiction and two animations. More than 2,000 applications were submitted from different film schools all over the world, out of which these films were selected.

The film deals with menstruation. A woman hailing from the Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra dies while menstruating. In rural areas in India, women are often asked to live in a separate home called the ‘menstrual cottage’. Yudhajit shows how women who have menstruation are discriminated against in Maharashtra and Nepal. They cannot even say that they have a period. They say, ‘I am touched by a crow’ – like a coded phrase of menstruation. In the film, the makers pose the question of why menstruation is compared with the touch of crows. 

The film also portrays the pandemic. The film avoids any disturbing scenes or stereotypes like blood stains on bed sheets.