‘Why does a man become a rapist?’ The question has been fermenting in filmmaker Aparna Sen’s mind for close to a decade. “The idea came to me first as a germ [she can’t remember if it was before or after Nirbhaya, the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder case]. Then it gradually got fleshed out into a story with characters and setting,” she says. Now, with The Rapist , Sen has posed the question to the world.
A very matter-of-fact film — or as Variety magazine calls it, a “richly-layered discussion starter” — it takes no sides. It follows Naina, played by Konkona Sen Sharma, a criminology professor in Delhi who survives a brutal rape and assault, while putting forward various points of view and also questioning the validity of the carceral state and the death sentence.
