‘Indian men confused as patriarchy challenged’

CANNES: Some Indian men are confused and struggle to understand changes to their patriarchal society, amid growing opportunities for women and awareness of sexual violence, filmmaker Kanu Behl told AFP in an interview in Cannes.
“The times that we live in create a really confused state for the Indian man because he’s used to being patriarchal,” the first-time director said.
“He’s used to being the dominating person; he’s used to being the breadwinner; he’s used to having a wife who’s performing a certain role and there’s a lot of role playing that happens and suddenly there’s the whole shift in the world outside.”
Behl’s directorial debut, “Titli,” tells the story of a young criminal trying to escape his oppressive family, especially his violent elder brother Vikram who works as a security guard at one of the many new shopping malls springing up all over India.
The film is being shown in the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious new talent section, along with films by other first time directors such as Canadian star Ryan Gosling.
Behl said the fatal gang-rape of a young student in New Delhi in December 2012 had an influence on his film as it happened as he and co-writer Sharat Katariya were putting together their first draft.
He and Katariya found themselves exploring the two worlds shown in the film — India’s burgeoning shopping malls and the family, which he called a “fire-breathing monster” in which violence was often as much psychological as physical.
Stressing that he was not making excuses for anyone, he said it led them to reflect on “the world of the consumer, the world of ‘the haves’ and the ones who are on the fringes and the anger and frustration that is built by seeing that shiny polished world for eight hours a day as a security guard and then going back to that other world (of home life in a poor neighborhood).