After Sanal, Ravi takes legal recourse against IFFI for Nude

Director Ravi Jadhav finds himself in the eye of the storm after his film Nude was pulled from the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) at the last minute without informing him. He now says that he’s ready to go through the submission process again, if he made a mistake the first time around.

“I now hear that I submitted an incomplete film. This is news to me. I follow the protocol of submission at all film festivals. About three months before IFFI, I sent them a screener of my film, as I was asked to. The screener contained about 95 per cent of the film. After that, the festival authorities were supposed to ask me to send the full film, once they viewed the screener and approved of it. I got no email, no intimation from them, after the screener was sent,” says Ravi, still baffled.

“Let me say my film is now a 100 per cent ready,” asserts Ravi. “I’m willing to send the complete film to IFFI. Would they reconsider?”

Ravi is now set to take the legal route against IFFI’s decision to yank his film out. In this legal fight, he’s united with Malayalam filmmaker Sanal Sasidharan, whose film S Durga was similarly yanked out of the fest. Ravi says, “I’m in touch with Sanal, and will follow the legal route taken by him, since I’m not familiar with this procedure. It would have made no sense for me to thrash around in the legal system all by myself; I’d have gotten nowhere. Both of us are left with no choice but to ask the I&B ministry and the IFFI for an explanation through legal means.”

Ravi feels that his film has been grossly misread by those in the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) ministry, who decided to withdraw it. “Nude is a very sensitive film about the male gaze. I’m sure if the I&B ministry appointed a panel of women to watch my film, they wouldn’t have decided to pull it out. Their decision seems to be based on an arbitrary reading of the film’s title, and the subject of a nude model. But my film goes far beyond the nude female form. It can’t be treated as something to be hastily swept under the carpet, just because the title makes some prudes uncomfortable,” he says.