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At the heart of Netflix's upcoming series Leila talks about a mother's quest for her daughter. But the series is also a reflection of the worst trends in society, a warning that a dystopia that could become reality if these forces disappeared. , a young Hindu woman whose daughter was torn from her after an oppressive socio-political order took root in her city. It is a world where segregation has reached its peak – the city is divided into sectors, each housing a particular community. The vertiginous walls divide the sectors and it is frowned upon to mix religions, castes and sub-castes.
Outside of these fortified communities, in areas where the poor live, there is extreme poverty, dirt, misery and degradation of civic amenities. In such a world, when Shalini dares to marry a Muslim man, Rizwan (Rahul Khanna), she pays the price by being separated from her family and confined to an institution where other women also transgressed are held captive.
The series is based on the dystopian novel Prayaag Akbar 2017 of the same name. The Indian-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, best known for her trilogy Elements – The Fire (1996), Earth (1999) and Water (2005) – was the creator executive producer and co-director of the Netflix series.
In an interview, Mehta claimed to have been drawn to Akbar's novel because of his dark themes. "What attracted me to the project is curiosity for things I do not know too much," she said . Scroll.in "I think the world is changing drastically to become a totalitarian ethos and it's curious. to me how does it happen so quickly. Whether Turkey, the United States or Hungary. Why are things changing so fast? Did the liberal left let people down or did we not understand it?
Actors in the series include Sanjay Suri, Siddharth, Arif Zakaria and Seema Biswas. Leila will be published on Netflix on June 15.
Leila was adapted for Netflix by a team of three people: the chief writer Urmi Juvekar with Suhani Kanwar and Patrick Graham. Kannada's filmmaker, Pawan Kumar (19459004) Lucia, U-Turn ) and Shankar Raman ( Gurgaon ) were commissioned to oversee the entire project. Each of them has made two episodes of the series in six episodes.
"The episodes were filmed completely separately but I insisted that both directors come to the studio that I had," Mehta said. "It was to make sure that the set's design, production design and casting were all in place, so you could feel it was the same world."
Leila
Netflix takes up the themes and basic tenet of Akbar's novel, but takes the story in new directions. "Urmi had a very good sense for my book and I loved reading it," said Akbar, author and journalist who already worked with Scroll.in "So here are my characters and elements of the world that I created. They have changed a lot with history, but the heart of it, Shalini and his quest, stays and I'm happy. "
Akbar stated that the driving force of dystopia in his novel was the caste and clbad barriers represented by the sectors.The fictional world borrowed elements in Mumbai and Delhi." My book examined how clbad and caste shape our urban spaces, "he added." The series adds to that a different type of political system. "
This politico-religious impulse is provided by the character of Aryavarta (Sanjay Suri), figurehead of the totalitarian order, a divinity-like entity whose posters dominate the world, whose name is on everyone's lips and whose adherents, dressed in uniforms, impose his decree The series was shot in Delhi and Gurgaon and was largely shot on site, with some visual effects used to create the high walls separating the different sectors of this extremely segregated world.
Leila is Netflix India's second attempt to make a dystopian account after its mini-series of 2018 of Ghoul with the star star of Radhika.Apt was created in a totalitarian regime characterized by sectarian violence, hyper nationalism and Islamophobia, a genre that is slow to spread in India, a country where extreme inequality, lack of civic amenities, caste discrimination and misery is what makes [Leila] Leila so powerful, according to Mehta, in fuzzy boundaries between the present and an anarchic future. "Dystopia is still rooted in the present," she said Scroll.in . "The setting of Leila is India's own, but its themes are universal. It becomes a dystopia when the particular becomes universal. "
Moreover, these social realities exist throughout the world, she says." You are segregating in Canada, "she said. "There are ghettos all over the world, segregation exists everywhere and without any excuse, and that's what's baffling."
Akbar said the dystopia of his novel was influenced by social forces and the discrimination he had observed over the years, and he remembered having trouble finding a home in Mumbai in 2014 because of his Muslim name. "It was a revealing experience for me," he said. he said, "These are long forces, it's not a political change, it's not a government, it's about the way we treat ourselves." what are our interactions that can lead us to a dystopian state of mind. "
The release of the trailer Leila in May was followed by a wave backlash in social media by groups who believe that the series is anti-Hindu.But Akbar said that the Council, the power structure that controls the city in the novel, is not based on any specific religion and rather constitutes an amalgam of aspects of different religions. [19659002] This idea came to him when he saw the picture of a priest, an imam and a pandit celebrating the Supreme Court decision in December 2013 to overturn a High Court order decriminalizing homobaduality (the Supreme Court overruled that earlier ruling), making legal homobaduality in India.)
" This [photograph] was a perfect example of how these three characters, who are not 39, may not hear in another context, can unite and remove the very basic personal freedom of someone, "Akbar says:" So the starting p The book was saying: What would happen- if there was a society in which all these "elders of the community" had to establish the rules?
Mehta reiterated that viewers had to reserve their judgment on this aspect until the broadcast of the series. "The world of social media has made immediate reactions available," she said. "I would say that I want people to see the series before deciding. It is certainly not anti-Hindu. The series deals with humanity, climate and lack of human dignity. "
Mehta is no stranger to such a policy of keeping the order. His 1998 film Fire which dealt with a bad relationship, was whitened uninterrupted by the censorship committee, but raised the strings of far-right groups. Volunteers led by Shiv Sena in Mumbai ransacked the theaters and ended the screenings. The film was finally reissued in February 1999.
Does talking about a dystopian world with a totalitarian and puritanical regime seem to be a natural extension of the filmmaker? "It did not even hit me, in fact, it was a very long time ago," said Mehta. " Leila is not so much a question of maintaining moral order, but of the fact that every time you have a totalitarian government, if you do not walk straight ahead, you are dead. "
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