'Wonder Women' star Parvathy Thiruvothu says cinema must highlight injustices

Mumbai, Nov 15

Award-winning Malayalam and Tamil actress Parvathy Thiruvothu flagged instances of 'honour killing', rape and oppression of the minorities to make a case for cinema addressing what all is going wrong in our society.

The actress, who is gearing up for the release of her upcoming streaming movie "Wonder Women", spoke to IANS on Tuesday and shared her thoughts about speaking up on the need to highlight these issues as a moral responsibility.

"Wonder Woman" is an English-language film directed by Anjali Menon with an all-woman cast. It is about five pregnant women confronting their deep-rooted problems as they come together for pre-natal classes.

Talking about the violence meted out to women as a result of caste discrimination, the actress said: "When our sisters are raped and hung on trees by upper-caste goons, there's hardly any word about it."

She then made a reference to the Karnataka hijab row without actually mentioning it. "There's hardly any noise around for women who want to dress up in the way they want to as per their beliefs. Ours is a democratic country, after all," she said.

Answering a question from IANS on the ongoing persecution of women in Iran, the actress said: "I don't have any reaction to matters such as these. I have stopped reacting, I feel we are way past giving reactions. It's the time to act so that we can put society on the right track."

Iran is seeing enormous protests after the death of a woman named Mahsa Amini while she was in the custody of the 'morality police' for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly. The protests have spread across the country and have fuelled global anger.

Parvathy noted: "When there's so much oppression happening on the Gaza strip, the Palestinians are being attacked, there are so many social media reactions, but when oppression happens in our neighbouring villages, it doesn't draw as much attention. Caste murders for instance are still referred to as honour killings when in reality they're simply caste killings."

She added: "I'm not saying that we shouldn't say anything about what is happening internationally, but it is our duty to raise our voices against oppression in any part of the world. And I have always said this: 'If you want to be international, be as local as possible.' First, let us address issues at home and then we can hope that the domino effect of countering oppression spreads out across the borders and helps people in other parts of the world."

"Wonder Women" will drop on SonyLIV on November 18.