“The Rapist”, which has its premiere at the Busan International Film Festival, is the hardest-hitting film that Indian filmmaker Aparna Sen has ever made.
A chronicler of different aspects of Indian life, Sen has previously won global acclaim for her eclectic body of work, which includes 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), Paroma (1985), and Iti Mrinalini (2010) as a director.
Sen is also one of India’s most celebrated actors, having worked with stalwarts of Indian cinema, including Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Rituparno Ghosh, as well as internationally with Ismail Merchant and James Ivory.
Sen first conceived the idea for The Rapist nearly 15 years ago and decided to revisit the subject following the recent spate of rape incidents in India.
She said:
“I began to wonder about why men rape. No one is born a rapist. They go through infancy, through the toddler stage and through boyhood in all innocence. When and how do these persons then become rapists? Does social inequality have anything to do with it? Or is it just genetic? I didn’t have an answer then and I don’t have one now. But I wanted to explore the idea nonetheless. And so I made ‘The Rapist’.”
The film is nominated for Busan’s prestigious Kim Ji-seok Award.
In the film, Sen’s daughter Konkona Sen Sharma plays a criminal psychology professor in Delhi who becomes the victim of a sexual assault and goes on to confront both the trauma and the societal prejudice that follows.
