Covid lockdowns were just being lifted when Anuja* moved to Kochi with aspirations of writing and eventually directing films. She came to work in Malayalam cinema a few years after the arrest of actor Dileep for allegedly orchestrating the sexual assault of a female colleague in 2017. The problems in the industry had been quite exposed by then and she only approached younger, seemingly progressive people for work. “I thought such spaces would be safer. But over three years have passed now and my guard has only gone further up, irrespective of the circle I work in,” she told The News Minute.

As the Malayalam film industry grapples with the aftermath of the Hema Committee report, stories of abuse continue to surface, challenging the narrative that sexual harassment is a thing of the past. TNM spoke to five young women, including technicians and actors, who told us that it is far from the truth that the abuse and exploitation has stopped. Despite public denials from industry stalwarts, the reality for many young women working behind the scenes is different — one of manipulation, betrayal, and trauma.

“I pitched some ideas to writers whose films did very well in recent times and some of them liked my samples. I kept discussing with them and in the one year that we waited for funds, I took up smaller gigs. They gained my confidence with the openness and safety they projected, until one night one of them sexually assaulted me. It shattered not just my spirit, but also my belief in men who otherwise make progressive films,” Anuja said.

The testimonies of these women, including Anuja, reveal how abuse remains concealed in this largely unregulated, male-dominated, complex workplace, where the personal overlaps with the professional.

Manipulation under the garb of being progressive

Hridaya*, who joined the industry as an assistant director when she was in her early 20s, said that her mental health was severely impacted in the attempt to make sense of what was happening to her. “I started work a few years ago with a well-known, senior director. I was full of ideas and he always heard me out, and spent time mentoring me. I felt really valued and thought I could learn and grow. But what followed made me want to quit everything,” she told TNM.

Hridaya elaborated that the said director seemed approachable, casual, and his team was full of youngsters. Like Anuja, Hridaya too felt it was a safer work environment compared to the more hierarchical, traditional film sets. “But slowly I realised that my openness was interpreted as ‘being available’,” she said.

Unlike actors, script and direction assistants like Anuja and Hridaya must work closely with the director. Work, for them, starts when the storyline is locked and extends through scripting, location hunting, casting, shooting, and post-production. This spans over 100 days and not only is their payment extremely disproportionate to the work they put in, but if they leave midway, they are neither paid in part nor credited for the work they did.

Female technicians told us that men largely populate film sets and women are left with no option but to overlook casual sexism and invasive behaviour to continue in their jobs. Some of these women ‘act like a bro’ to make friends with their male colleagues, while others give in to romantic propositions thinking that will prevent other men in the team from hitting on them. Most of them put up with the pretence until an instance of abuse completely breaks them.

“I had worked on the script of a film this director was going to shoot. We went location hunting and work was hectic. At one point, most other team members were given accommodation in a certain hotel, but he moved me to a room in his hotel. This is not uncommon, because filmmakers do have daily meetings and close interactions with their direct assistants. Though I felt slightly uncomfortable, I thought I was being too suspicious,” Hridaya recalled. But things took a wrong turn when the director, who came to her room to discuss the shoot, misbehaved with her.

“At first, I blamed myself. I thought I may have given some wrong signals. It took me a while to recognise that this man, who was my father’s age, was baiting me all along by pretending to be friendly and open-minded,” she said.

Both Hridaya and Anuja told us that they can now see how abuse remains cloaked under the garb of being progressive, feminist even.

“The thing is that these men have an image to keep. So they behave well with women initially. Their films are political, their social media handles have all kinds of commentary, and they seem to know all the right words about gender equality. In the process, we also begin to develop a sense of camaraderie. Then as I began to feel safe, the incident happened. And I was thrust into a spiral of confusion. It took me long to see that I was being manipulated,” Anuja said.

In many situations, women expressing discomfort is also construed as incapability. So when a woman asks for safer transport and other facilities, she is made to feel like a burden. “Most of us just swallow our discomfort and continue because the moment we raise a complaint we can see the men around us thinking that they will never hire women going forward,” Hridaya pointed out.

Most young women who join the film industry get there after uphill battles at home. Families largely do not approve of their daughters working round the clock in film sets with a large crew of men. So when abuse happens in the workplace, many of them are unable to share it with their parents fearing that it will end their career.

“I continued working because if I told my folks, they would never let me go back to work in any film. Besides, I wanted to be credited for all the hard work I did. Or everything would go to waste,” Hridaya said. Anuja managed to inform her abuser’s colleagues about his behaviour, but she too did not have a very robust support system to get her through the trauma. She started taking therapy from a psychologist.

Though both of them did have safer experiences in a few other film sets, also consisting of younger, politically aware people, they told us that the trauma has created a constant sense of suspicion. This, they say, has also significantly brought down their confidence. “At one point, I felt that I would never be more than my gender or my body. I took a long break and even contemplated quitting the industry. But I somehow came out of it,” Hridaya said.

If female technicians are manipulated under the garb of them not being open enough or ‘bro enough’ to withstand workplace conditions, young female actors are told that they deserve less until they build market value.

No market value, no dignity

Soumya (name changed) described her ordeal of mistreatment and indignity while acting in a Malayalam web series, after which she quit her career and left the country.

“I was called for a day-long shoot but they refused to book train tickets for me. After back and forth, I drove down in my own car. The shoot went on till late at night, but they did not provide accommodation. There was no food either. When I asked, the production controller told me that he could buy me a packet of biscuits. The humiliation I felt triggers me to date,” Soumya told TNM.

She added that work contracts are rarely given to women, save a few successful ones. This makes it more difficult for them to claim their payment or expenses.

“We are taught to believe that we have no value or that we are always at fault. This makes it easy for men in decision-making positions to deny basic rights and evade accountability for abuse,” she explained.

Sanjana (name changed) shared her experience of working with a popular director in the launch film of a young actor. “I was new to the industry and there were many female actors, all of us newcomers. The director would constantly put us up in unsafe accommodations. If we protested, he would threaten to cut off our scenes. He also body-shamed many of us, making casteist comments on our skin colour and demeaning those who did not look ‘modern enough’. We were told that we had no market value since we were beginners and that we were powerless to question him,” she told TNM.

She added that many technicians and actors left the shoot, and the others who remained were told by the director that he would take personal care to ensure their roles had prominence. “I knew he said that to each of us, in a desperate bid to retain people. At that moment, most of us were so vulnerable that some of us stayed,” she said.

This underlines the importance of situating abuse and workplace toxicity on film sets in the context of power. The Hema Committee report mentions the presence of an all-controlling power lobby in Malayalam cinema, consisting of top-tier actors, producers, and directors. When power consolidates, abuse thrives unquestioned. And it is the beginners, the ones at the lowest rungs of the ladder, who are the worst hit.

Manjusha (name changed), who has worked in many hit films, told TNM that until a woman climbs up the ladder and creates her own audience appeal, she is relatively more prone to harassment in the industry. “When I started, I faced many issues – a makeup artist touched me invasively, and a production controller peeped into my changing room. It was so confusing because they do all this very casually, with a sense of entitlement even. Until you prove to have monetary value, people behave as they please,” she said.

Soumya explained that she had to bargain for money, though the amount offered itself was unacceptably low. “They offer so little and won’t even pay that much in the end. I have been put up in shady hotel rooms with really pathetic washrooms. Once the producer of a film, which starred a much-loved young actor, slyly called me into his room and told me that he would cast me in his next film in a meaty role alongside another big female actor if I “compromised”,” she recalled. When she refused, he slut shamed her for having a romantic partner.

‘Adjustment’ and ‘compromise’ are words that the Hema Committee report dedicates an entire sub-head to, describing how men solicit sexual favours from women citing that even big female actors have done this to get to the top. What emerges from the testimonies of these women is also how they are conditioned to believe that they have no value.

When women do not have the mental bandwidth to focus on their craft because of the safety problems in the workspace, they cannot sustain long enough to build a good body of work, said Soumya. Therefore, climbing up the power ladder, for women, is not just about talent. 

“My dignity was so shattered that I wondered why I was even trying to pursue this career. And this happened after doing several films with considerably decent roles. I was always told I was mistreated because I was a nobody in cinema. What about basic human respect?” she asked.

For these women, to even comprehend that such subhuman treatment amounts to workplace harassment took a long time. But what appears tougher is to report such instances in an industry that assigns value to human beings based on their commercial worth and social influence.

Complex problems with no mechanism to complain

Sexual harassment is a complex experience and its impact on a person cannot be gauged with a uniform standard. But in a society like ours, where the ‘ideal victim’ is someone who is brutally violated with visible physical trauma, anything less is treated as passable. Even if these women go to the police, they are not very welcome, as also noted by the Hema Committee report.

The only instances of abuse that are investigated, therefore, are the ones in which the assault is extreme, like in the case of the 2017 actor assault. After the release of the Hema Committee report, several FIRs were filed against actors and directors based on complaints by women. But most survivors were heavily cyber harassed, their trauma sometimes labelled as not ‘grave enough’ to warrant action against the accused men. When Bengali actor Sreelekha Mishra alleged sexual misconduct against Kerala Film Academy chairman Ranjith, the Culture Minister’s response was that he is “a well-known talent who cannot be asked to step down on the basis of a mere allegation”.

While the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, known as the POSH Act, mandates Internal Committees (IC) in film sets to address workplace harassment and abuse, the Hema Committee report itself says that in a power-centric workplace like the film industry, the ICs may be manipulated by those who have more control.

Soumya also pointed out that production controllers, who are the contact point for most actors, are often people with no artistic inclination or sense of justice. “Since they do not have art backgrounds, it is just another job for them. They neither care nor does anyone monitor them,” she added. 

The lack of background checks on people hired for production jobs like driving was brought up in the aftermath of the 2017 actor assault as well, where the prime accused, Pulsar Suni, was a driver at several film sets.

Hridaya, who took a break after her ordeal with the Malayali director, later ventured into other languages where she worked in the direction team. In one particular set, the majority of the crew were women, and this, she said, is what healed her.

“Representation is very important. The workplace must be regulated and rules must be strictly followed. But the question is also about the lack of understanding of the more subtle dynamics of abuse. When there are more women, at least there is someone to talk to,” she said.

Agreeing with Hridaya, Manjusha said that those in the industry still don’t consider any of what happens to women as harassment.

“We are told such demeaning things. We carry the trauma wherever we go. Nobody cares. They play so many mind games and none of this is perceived as sexual harassment. It is only when we tell other female colleagues and they resonate that we can find a way to quietly reassure ourselves. But that is not enough,” she said.

This report was republished from The News Minute as part of The News Minute-Newslaundry alliance. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity. Read about our partnership here and become a TNM subscriber here.

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