I'm a great believer in human spirit: Deepa Mehta on healing in COVID-19 times

Filmmaker Deepa Mehta said it was a no brainer to travel all the way from Canada to the national capital to screen her film Funny Boy at the Engendereds I-View World Human Rights Film Festival as opportunities like this help provide a chance for healing.

Filmmaker Deepa Mehta said it was a ''no brainer'' to travel all the way from Canada to the national capital to screen her film ''Funny Boy'' at the Engendered's I-View World Human Rights Film Festival as opportunities like this help provide a chance for healing. Based on Shyam Selvadurai's book of the same name, the film is set amidst the backdrop of Tamil oppression and resistance as it narrates the story of Arjie, who comes of age at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Sri Lanka. ''Funny Boy'' was recently announced as Canada's official entry for the International Film Category at the 2021 Oscars.

Mehta, who grew up and studied in Delhi, said returning to the city felt like a homecoming. The festival started on Thursday at the DLF Cyber-Hub in Gurgaon with a socially-distanced red carpet and COVID-conscious screening of the film.

''For me, it was a no brainer and also very fortuitous. It is an amazing festival for what it stands for. ''It stands for humanity and if anything this film is based on a book which is exactly about that -- the celebration and the importance of love during very difficult times. And if these are not difficult times, then I don't know what they are,'' Mehta told PTI in an interview ahead of the film's screening. The internationally renowned filmmaker behind critically-acclaimed films such as ''Fire'', ''Earth'' and ''Water'', said the 10-day-long festival is about how to overcome prejudice.

''It was a perfect fit. It so happens that it is screening on an important day which is the International Human Rights Day,'' she said. Mehta said while the world has always been a bit dispiriting, it was never as bad as it is now with the rise of ''populist nationalism'' and COVID-19 pandemic and what it is doing to people.

''I feel like it is a test. My mother calls it 'Kalyug'. Are we going to rise like the Phoenix from it? I think we will because I am a great believer in the human spirit and its will to survive and perhaps come out of it with dignity.'' Festivals like I-View World Human Rights take into cognisance that ''this is an opportunity for us to actually heal because we are wounded. It means support and solidarity'', Mehta added. Festival director Myna Mukherjee, who is also the founder of Engendered, said there were challenges in hosting a physical festival but the idea was to put the focus back on humanity during the times of coronavirus and they instantly thought of Mehta's film. ''Our festival has always been at the intersection of gender and marginalities and Deepa's films speak so much about that and we have been such big admirers of hers for so many years,'' she said.

Mukherjee said as the film industry has been hit badly across the world, hosting the festival was a ''symbolic gesture'' of solidarity. ''I think it's extraordinarily brave and only a filmmaker like Deepa would sort of lend herself to a screening of the film at such a difficult time like this because I know personally how difficult it has been for her to fly from Canada to here,'' she added.

Mukherjee said othering of people becomes more marked during fearful times as there is a sense of paranoia, which makes it important to remind one another about the marginality that ''we all face''. ''This is a festival that tries to find empathy for each other,'' she added. The I-View World Human Rights Film Festival, a hybrid festival hosted in NYC and New Delhi, will showcase 50 international features, shorts and documentaries with both virtual as well as physical (COVID-19) sensitive screenings.

Apart from ''Funny Boy'', the festival will also screen Nathan Grossman's documentary ''I am Greta'', about environmental activist Greta Thunberg's rise to popularity as its centrepiece. Sarmad Khooosat's ''Zindagi Tamasha'', which is Pakistan's official entry to the Oscars, will close the festival. The I-View World Human Rights Film Festival will run till December 20.

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