National Award-winning actress Konkona Sen Sharma, who is receiving a lot of positive response for her work in the recently released streaming movie Accused, has called sensationalism a very easy reward.
Konkona Sen says Accused stays away from sensationalism
The actress spoke with IANS during the promotions of the film and said that Accused stays away from sensationalism.
Accused follows the story of a woman who has been accused of sexually harassing a victim.
It stars Konkona Sen Sharma and Pratibha Ranta in the lead.
The actress told IANS, “Sensationalism is a very easy reward. It`s a very quick and easy reward and it`s a very quick new cycle. And we`re not looking at that, actually. We`re looking at this as a film with a great deal of nuance and depth and it`s staying away from easy answers”.
She further mentioned, “So it`s really more an exploration of power and exploration of human relationships. What happens to a relationship when it is affected by an accusation like this? How does it unravel? How does it come together? And what were the pre-existing biases that are positive or negative that we have towards a woman in power, towards a queer couple? And how does that affect our judgment of them? So it`s actually a completely different ballgame altogether”.
Director Anubhuti Kashyap on Accused
Earlier, Anubhuti Kashyap, who has helmed the film, had shared the prerequisites that she had in mind to tell the story. Kashyap’s previous works include Doctor G (2022), a movie about a medical student who becomes the only man in the gynecology department of his college
She told IANS, “The story, the subject was such that it always needed a certain lens, a certain empathetic approach towards it. It couldn`t have been sensationalised, is what we felt. And I didn`t see it somehow in that lens at all. So we`ve kept that conscious choice, the treatment while writing the script also. We wanted to tell incidents in the story, events that make people uncomfortable in parts, not the queer relationship, but a lot of other things that were happening in the core of the story. So that was one of the guidelines”.
Another interesting element is the central relationship between the two women. The film puts forward the queer relationship just like any other one, without making a great hoo-ha. “That’s why we based the film in the UK. If we had done it in India, we couldn’t have treated it so casually. We would have had to make a statement about it,” says Kashyap.
Accused is available to stream on Netflix.