Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt, members of the Gully Boy, test taboos at the cinema at the Berlin Film Festival

Two of Bollywood's biggest stars have been created Gully Boy, a blockbuster directed by a still rare woman who stings persistent taboos, at the Berlin Film Festival. Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt have cast considerable weight in the sector behind the story unveiled Saturday of a few wanting to get out of their Mumbai slum and their traditional Muslim families to realize their dreams. "There are comments about clbad fractures, choices about the choices young people make – that they want to be stuck in something that gives them no accomplishment in the pursuit of their pbadion," he said. said Ranveer Singh, whose character, Murad, has experienced a meteoric rise after publishing his first online rap video.

"I think there's a whole variety of things embedded between the lines that might well have a positive social impact."

Ranveer Singh at the Berlin Film Festival. (Image reproduced with the permission of AFP)

Alia Bhatt's character, Safeena, wears a traditional Muslim headscarf, but resists her family's attempts to arrange her marriage and wants to become a surgeon.

Murad and Safeena have loved since their childhood but must keep the secret on their relationship with their parents so that they meet for illicit encounters.

"You can not really be so sure of who can be offended or not," Alia Bhatt said of the film's more delicate topics.

Alia Bhatt at the Berlin Film Festival. (Image reproduced with the permission of AFP)

"My Safeena character, I do not think she's having a problem wearing her hijab and I do not think she's having a culture problem." What's wrong with her, though, is to not be able to be honest with his parents. "

& # 39; Flammable & volatile & # 39;

Ranveer Singh, director of rap in the movie inspired in part by Divine and Naezy, Mumbai's hip-hop stars, said it had taken nine months to feel ready to photograph.

"I have been playing rap and hip-hop since I was very young," he said. "I started by listening to MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice and Will Smith, then a gangsta rap a bit harder like Tupac, the Wu-Tang clan and the NWA, and then Eminem."

The film sees Murad perfecting his talent and turning into poetry the misery and tension of his original life until a popular local rapper convinces him to try hip-hop.

But soon Murad and her mother are fired from their homes by her violent father, who forbids her to perform and has taken a much younger second wife.

In a breathtaking scene, Murad's father tells his mother that she is useless in bed and screams back: "You've never learned to touch a woman properly".

"For me, getting married for the second time is not as flammable and volatile as the fact that his first wife can not afford to leave," said director Zoya Akhtar at AFP. . "Because she does not have the financial power to leave and there's nowhere to go, that's the biggest problem for me." they should not be taboo because they exist and it happens. "

Zoya Akhtar, who recently directed an episode of the Netflix series Stories of lust exploring female baduality, she was a "big fan of hip-hop" as a liberation music.

Team Gully Boy at the Berlin Film Festival. (Image reproduced with the permission of AFP)

"When I was editing my latest film, my editor showed me a video of a 21-year-old kid named Naezy, who had recorded this song on a phone and played it on YouTube and was singing it. his life, his socio-economic space, his family and he had a crazy flow, an incredible writing style and it was legitimate, "she said.

"I just realized that a whole movement called Gully Rapgully means street, alley. This young city dweller is not represented at all in the general public and tells stories.

Gully Boy culminates in a rap battle that will be the first part in Mumbai of the American rapper Nas, who was executive producer of the film.

& # 39; A revolution & # 39;

Zoya Akhtar and her stars have greeted a growing generation of filmmakers in India.

They also welcomed the gradual arrival in Bollywood of the #MeToo movement against badual misconduct as well as the "Time's Up" campaign against the badism of the industry.

"It's nothing short of a revolution and I think it's amazing, it really exploded and that explosion caused collateral damage," Ranveer Singh said. "But I think it's a very important point in history, especially for a patriarchal culture for centuries."

Alia Bhatt agreed, but said he feared a cooling effect in the industry. "Maybe one man will think twice, maybe 15 times, before even suggesting inappropriate conversations or inappropriate gestures," she said. "(But) I hope that now people will not start looking at this as an excuse for not working with a woman or giving a woman a job."

Zoya Akhtar said the debate, which recently saw big names in the industry facing charges, was a "conversation that was to take place".

"I think the women who came and spoke were very brave, they were hurt, but they changed their minds and I thank them for that."

(With the exception of the title, this story was not changed by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)