Watch now: Dibakar Banerjee on Censorship, Cinema and Tees

Many thanks to those who joined us for a wide-ranging chat with filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee, and critics Aditya Shrikrishna and Subrat Beura. As you may know by now, “Tees”, though commissioned by Netflix, remains unreleased. You can read Aditya and Subrat’s review here.

Tees” follows three generations of a Kashmiri Muslim family to trace the increasing marginalization of Muslims in India.

In 1989, Ayesha (Manisha Koirala) is a wealthy Muslim woman in Kashmir amid the insurgency and Kashmiri Pandit exodus. Her daughter, Zia (Huma Qureshi), is a queer corporate lawyer living in Mumbai in 2019, dealing with daily micro — and macro—aggressions. Zia’s adopted son, Anhad Draboo (Shashank Arora), is a failed writer living in a dystopian future Delhi in 2042, as his novel, titled Tees, didn’t pass the censors. Dibakar, of course, sees the irony too.

In our chat, we discussed why Dibakar chose to focus on Kashmir, and why he thinks Netflix has delayed releasing the film — despite its not needing to pass censor boards. We also heard his views on censorship, including self-censorship, cinema, and the state of storytelling in Hindi films today. Diabkar, Aditya, and Subrat also bantered about what they each would have cut from the film if they were in charge.

Dibakar sarcastically speculated that the only way to make movies was to keep them utterly devoid of meaning: to have pretty people, and focus on heterosexual relations between middle and upper class Indians. While I know he is right, I hold firmly to hte power of storytelling to not only reflect our times, but to chart a way forward (and refuse to subject myself to anything like The Royals ever again!).

Thank you again for joining us. At Polis’ culture desk, we remain committed to covering censorship in art, cinema, and literature around the world. Please stay tuned for our forthcoming newsletter that will corral all our work on silencing, and the radical power of storytelling, from Nigeria to India, from the 1970s to now.

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