The Kerala Story director Sudipto Sen says ‘whenever we talk about terrorism, people bring up a particular religion’

The Kerala Story has been making headlines ever since the makers released the trailer of the film directed by Sudipto Sen. The trailer of the film is being slammed by both the ruling and opposition parties in Kerala.

The parties have called Adah Sharma-starred a ‘propaganda film’. According to the CPI(M) and the Congress in Kerala, the film falsely claims that the women got converted, radicalised and were deployed in terror missions in India and the world. Meanwhile, in a recent interview with FreePress Journal, the director Sudipto Sen opened up about the controversy.

The director said that we have always been told that terror doesn’t have a religion, but in Kerala whenever they talk about it, they bring up a particular religion. He said, “the tragedy is, we are being told that terror does not have any religion. But, in Kerala, when we talk about terrorism, when we talk about what is being perpetrated to the girls, people stand by to say ‘ban this because they are Islamophobic. So, whenever we’ve started talking about the terrorist, they bring up a particular religion, so they associate. There are debates going on whether to ban it or not. And at the same time, the amount of euphoria among the people to watch the film, you won’t believe that with every passing hour, our distributors are increasing the number of prints.”

One of the reasons why The Kerala Story is facing backlash is the number of victims shown in the trailer (32,000). While talking about the same, the director said, “we have the account of 32,000, we have the account of 50,000. We asked through RTI to the Kerala government, that tell us whether we are wrong, then what is the truth? They did not say anything. They have replied, but it was such a confusing answer, there is no answer.”

Sudipto also talked about his intention behind making the film. He stated, “I have only one agenda, to tell the truth about the girls. So, I will stick to my agenda to expose the perpetrators and try to bring them to justice. In spite of that, if you have questions, you have to see the film. Then you decide whether it is an agenda driven film or a political film. To me. It’s a human saga. That’s it.”