The year that was: The feminist reckoning in Malayalam cinema continues

THE year 2024 belongs to Malayalam cinema, in more ways than one would have imagined.

Within the first four months, the industry saw four back-to-back blockbuster releases. By April, while other film industries were trying to find their feet, Malayalam cinema catapulted beyond the Rs.1,000 crore mark at the worldwide box office. The underdog had taken Indian cinema by storm.

However, the one release that no one saw coming was that of the Hema Committee report.

On August 19, 2024, the Kerala government placed into the hands of 16 journalists a 290-page redacted version of the report.

From the testimonies of nearly 40 women who recalled, re-lived, and revealed their experiences, the Justice Hema Committee report found that the Malayalam film industry had morphed into a "boys club" that functioned like a "mafia" where powerful men had weaponised sex and expected women to work under conditions that violated labour rights and human rights.

The Malayalam industry, which was on a winning streak, was forced to a screeching halt.

The year began to be referred to as Malayalam cinema's ‘second innings’ with the #MeToo movement. Once again, the State was forced to take cognizance and the house of cards were rattled when cases were registered against powerful men within the industry. However, the release of the report spotlighted the conversation around reforming the workspace as much as holding perpetrators accountable. 

The perseverance 

“The sky is full of mysteries; with the twinkling stars and the beautiful moon. But, scientific investigation revealed that stars do not twinkle nor does the moon look beautiful” — These are the very first lines of the Hema Committee report.

Within five weeks of the report being published, scores of men within the industry were accused of sexual misconduct, several cases of sexual assault were filed, and the state government was forced to form a special investigating team to look into the allegations.

Far from acknowledging the findings of the report, the men were more concerned about work, about the economic repercussions, and the reputation of Malayalam cinema than the repressed experiences of women.

Their statements deftly separated women’s anecdotes of harassment from the production of films, quickly placed the responsibility of inquiry on courts, and said reform is the concern of the state.

"Let the law take its course," they said, shrugging off the report as if it were rainwater on a duck's back.

What they failed to understand is that women, while articulating their pain, are actually also talking about work itself — that they are simply trying to articulate the difference in the weight of existence experienced by men and women at a workspace.

The journey of the formation of the Hema Committee and the release of its report in itself is a story of power, policy, and perseverance.

The trigger 

Women have always said things to each other. For decades, they have whispered words of caution, narrated anecdotes of trauma under their breath, and quietly pointed out the men to watch out for.

However, this changed on February 17, 2017, when a top female actor walked into a police station. That night, she had been abducted and sexually assaulted by six hired men, who threatened to leak the video of the assault if she dared to complain. Less than four months later, the police probe accused actor Dileep of conspiring the rape as an act of revenge.

When she walked into the police station that night, little did she know that she was about to force an entire system, an industry, a society, and each of us to investigate our own practices, workspaces, friendships, and selves.

This crime pushed the women in Malayalam cinema to the edge. Coming together in solidarity with the survivor, they all realised that in one way or another, each of them were also survivors. Fourteen women from within the industry formed the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC).

The loneliness of their endured and repressed experiences had to be shattered.

A full six months before the global #MeToo campaign, Kerala witnessed the #Avalkoppam (Stand with Her) storm. Woman after woman wrote social media posts highlighting their experiences with power, patriarchy, prejudice, and abuse.

The Kerala government doubled down under pressure and constituted the Hema Committee. The objective was to listen to accounts of gender injustice, record abuse, and recommend policies to improve the work space.

For the first time, women's collective trauma was going to be 'official' and their pain was counted as 'news'. As author Annie Ernaux said in her Nobel speech, “When the unspeakable is brought to light, it is political.”

The World

On October 5, 2017, the New York Times broke the Harvey Weinstein story. Within one year, the hashtag #MeToo was used over 190 lakh times, pushing the conversation of sexual assault at workplace to a top global agenda.

While the moment of outrage Kerala is now witnessing is being called the 'second wave' of the #MeToo movement, in reality, not only does the feminist revolution in Kerala predate the international #MeToo campaign, but in fact goes further than the global crusade.

What the Weinstein movement did was give a vocabulary and legitimacy to the women in Kerala, whose fight for gender justice had already been well underway for at least five months. "It helped us not look crazy," said one actor.

In 2019, one year after its formation, the Hema Committee submitted a 5000-page report to the Kerala government. And then, the very report that had offered a state-sponsored catharsis to women, was duly buried for the next five years.

Yet again, women were let down by a system that ought to have protected them.

By then, Dileep was released and back to work, whereas the survivor in his case left the Malayalam film industry altogether. Men turned the #MeToo movement into a joke, women felt isolated on film sets, and those who spoke out were considered ‘troublemakers’ and dropped from projects.

"Just like taxi drivers and auto drivers have a union, I guess women too have one now. Let them enjoy," said one filmmaker in Kerala when I met him earlier this year.

Mohanlal, one of Malayalam cinema’s biggest superstar and then president of the artists association A.M.M.A trivialised the resistance and said #MeToo should not be considered a movement. “It is a fad, a fashion,” he said. 

The fatigue set in.

The Men 

In the last decade, as India discovered the finesse of Malayalam cinema and fell in love with Fahadh Faasil, a parallel reality also existed. What happened was that filmmakers in Kerala discovered a promising market for progressive, feminist films while the feminists themselves were out of work.

As Ken Auletta, a reporter who extensively profiled Harvey Weinstein once said, “Championing good movies and exhibiting good behaviour did not always overlap."

Nothing reflects the double standards in the Malayalam industry like the impunity that the men were quick to reclaim and the hope that women lost when the Committee's report was buried in 2019.

Which is why on August 19, 2024, Kerala sat back in shock when the court directed the government to release a redacted version of the report. This meant nearly 55 pages of details regarding sexual harassment, including the names of survivors, perpetrators, and witnesses were removed. In fact, the Kerala government was accused of redacting portions of the report beyond what was suggested by the State Information Commission (SIC).

Despite that, the report continues to be a testimony of how the Malayalam industry is controlled by a “power group” of men, and how women are systematically subjected to violence and indignity. What makes it all the more damning is that the report clearly notes that all the findings are based "on direct evidence and not on hearsay”.

The findings of the report exposed nothing that women in the Malayalam film world did not already know, but everything that men in the industry needed to acknowledge. For the very first time in the history of the feminist movement in India, all that women have been whispering to each other for years had been formally recorded.

In the weeks following its release, some of the most powerful men within the industry like Mohanlal, Mammootty, and Fahadh Faasil slipped into a collective, questionable silence.

The few male voices that emerged were from actors like Prithviraj and Tovino Thomas, and directors Aashiq Abu and Jeo Baby, who extended their support to the women.

Eventually, survivors began speaking to the media, cases were registered, and powerful men wouldn't step out of their homes for fear of being questioned by the media.

When their backs hit the wall, in a symbolic gesture, the male-dominated board of A.M.M.A resigned. The men, led by Mohanlal, stepped down citing “moral responsibility”.

The WCC and the women in Kerala called the move a cowardly cop-out, which once more laid the onus of shaping the gender justice conversation on women.

Finally, Mohanlal and Mammootty were forced to respond. While welcoming the report, in the same breath, both men dismissed it.

In a press conference, Mohanlal asked, “The report is welcome, but what are we supposed to do?” Instead of addressing the concerns of women, he said, “Please don’t focus on the report alone and destroy cinema. The industry has to move forward or it will stand still.”

Similarly, addressing the committee report’s criticism of men misusing power in the industry, Mammootty wrote in his social media post, “There is no 'power group’ in cinema. Cinema is not an arena where such things can exist.”

Like Mohanlal, he too said, “Ultimately, cinema must survive.”

It was as if the experiences of women occurred in a different industry, in a different country, on a different planet. For men, it seemed like talking about women's trauma deviates from their efficiency to produce work.

Men were quick to turn around and question the credibility of trauma by asking, "So why didn't you say so earlier? Why now?".

Well, that silence too was because of work and the fear of losing a career over a complaint. The Hema Committee report is a proof of gender violence but more than anything, it is a testament to what it means for women to work.

In fact, a year after the WCC was formed, Parvathy Thiruvothu, a national award winning actor and founding member of the WCC said in an interview, “None of us are getting any offers. The minute WCC is attached to our name, we’re the odd ones out.”

The Collective themselves discouraged newer actresses from joining them so as to not lose out on work opportunities.

Jodi Cantor, the investigative reporter who broke the Harvey Weinstein story, succinctly described this: “At its core, the Weinstein story – along with its greatest impact – is all about work.”

Most women who were harassed by Weinstein expressed grief of a life lost in trauma, about work that was taken away from them, and a career that will not have a do-over.

Thus while the courts will decide the extent of Harvey Weinstein’s criminality, “the criminal justice system isn’t built to remedy the destruction of someone’s career options or ambitions,” she wrote.

The Vision

The push for the conversation to be about work is precisely why defining the rage post the release of the Hema Committee report in Kerala as a “second #MeToo wave” isn't entirely accurate.

In 2018, during the Weinstein movement, the focus was centred on naming the perpetrator. However, in 2017 itself, when the WCC was formed, they emphasised that while men need to be held accountable, the priority was to reform the workspace.

While men were called out, Parvathy Thiruvothu said that the fall out of the 2018 #MeToo movement was that women were slut shamed, character assassinated, dragged through newsrooms, slapped with defamation cases, their mental health compromised, and ultimately left entirely exhausted.

Women in Film (WIF) an advocacy network fighting for gender equity in Hollywood, conducted a survey five years after the #MeToo explosion. The objective was to analyse the impact and changes in the culture of the workspaces in Hollywood.

While the results indicated an improvement in awareness, 69% of the respondents said that they have continued to personally experience abuse or misconduct even after the Weinstein movement.

This is why the Hema Committee report remains a historic testament to the vision of the WCC.

Its findings and recommendations are not just for the state or the courtroom. The recorded violence are not complaints that need “the law to take its course”.

The very premise of the report itself is actually an invitation to both men and women in cinema to reimagine a better workspace. It is an invitation for other film industries across India to push for preventive measures.

What the report also reveals is that many women, unable to cope with the sexual exploitation, were forced to give up their dreams and quit the workforce. And the women who continue to work, do so not because they haven't faced harassment but despite it.