Nearly two months after its theatrical release, actress Taapsee Pannu's third film with filmmaker Anubhav Sinha is gearing up for its digital streaming release on Zee5.
A courtroom thriller with Malayali actress Kani Kusruti ("All We Imagine As Light") as a central character, "Assi" (English: Eighty) will begin streaming from April 17.
The film, which opened in theatres with mostly positive reviews, takes on the subject of the rising cases of sexual violence and exploitation in India. The "eighty" refers to the daily number of reported cases.
Kani Kusruti plays Parima, a Delhi teacher who has to endure physical and mental trauma after being brutally gang-raped by five men. Taapsee plays Raavi (Taapsee Pannu), a lawyer who navigates a corrupt system to seek punishment for the culprits while fighting societal apathy. Meanwhile, a vigilante ("Chattri Man") is on the loose with his own brand of justice. Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub plays Kani's husband, who is being pressured to drop the case.
Other cast members include Manoj Pahwa, Kumud Mishra, Supriya Pathak, Revathi, and Naseeruddin Shah, among others.
In an earlier interview with PTI, Sinha said that he was compelled to make the film due to an inner conflict that had been bothering him for a long time.
"I was going through this internal conflict and kept thinking, What can I do?' Why are we not doing enough? Is the police not doing anything? What about the judiciary?' And then I realised that the problem is something else. It is easy to blame the police and judiciary, but difficult to blame yourself. This film was written while I was going through this 'antardwand' (inner conflict). This is the number of cases reported every day. There is no count of those that are hidden daily. This number was so shocking when we calculated it because something like this occurs every 18 to 20 minutes. By the time you and I finish talking about it, a woman would have already been exploited," he said.
