Asian Window

Bollywood is tackling the horror of honour killings for the first time – and they’re filming in Birmingham. In The Guardian, Anita Pati reports on a director with a mission:

Land, Gold, Women

This a Bollywood film, boss?” asks the Asian market trader, hoisting himself up between his okra and his pineapples. At Birmingham’s vegetable market, Bollywood producer Vivek Agrawal, stubbled and in Prada glasses, is telling curious Asians and beige-slacked pensioners that this is a public awareness film. “You have to be careful because there’s unruly people out there,” he says. “The other day they were shouting ‘action’ and ‘cut’.”

It is actually Agrawal’s first foray into social realism, or “arthouse” cinema, as he describes it. He’s chosen honour killings as the focus for Land, Gold, Women, the first Bollywood feature film on this controversial subject. The low-budget indie will be shot over the next four weeks in Birmingham – the city’s ethnically mixed population, says Agrawal, is perfect for the film’s cross-cultural themes.

Land, Gold, Women – named after the three elements in which tribal honour is preserved – centres on a relatively liberal Asian family in Britain. Seventeen-year-old Saira plans to study literature at university, when she’ll have more time with her white boyfriend, David. Her dad, Dr Nazir Khan, is a university professor. Her mum, Rizwana, speaks only Urdu throughout the film. Nazir’s conflict about his daughter’s potential stray from her roots is agitated by the arrival of his strict elder brother Riyaaz from India. Riyaaz brings a marriage proposal from a family back home. No is not an option. The ending is grisly.

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