However, this was later settled with a deal with British media company Channel 4 and Phoolan Devi received international recognition with it.Īlso Read: 'Aai Kuthe Kay Karte' Episode Written Update Jan 13: Everyone Gets Shocked Seeing Anirudh Seema Biswas in recent years
As per IMDb trivia, the subject of the movie Phoolan Devi herself had a problem with the movie and made all efforts to get it banned in the country and went on to say that she would sacrifice her life in front of a cinema if it wasn’t. The movie was also caught in a lot of controversies. The film went on to win the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi, Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie and Best Direction in 1994. Seema Biswas went on to win the National Film Awards for Best Actress in 1995 and then a Filmfare Awards for Best Female Debut in 1995, however, the movie was not Seema’s debut and she appeared on screen for the first time in the movie Amshini in 1988. The movie was based on the life of Indian dacoit-turned-politician Phoolan Devi and was adapted from the Mala Sen authored book India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi. The film made headlines after she had to strip for a scene. If you did not know the story was based on truth you would think it was stretching credulity to its limits.Seema Biswas won major acclaim and got her breakthrough with her performance in Bandit Queen, directed by Shekhar Kapur. You must prepare yourself to be intellectually and morally challenged but whatever your feelings about the film and its heroine you cannot fail to be moved. This film does perhaps feel as if it is a bit of a polemic and it is not for the squeamish. But the standard of acting generally is very high even though many of the people on screen are amateurs, including the young Phoolan Devi who apparently walked in off the street.
Seema Biswas dominates the screen as the much-wronged, vengeful Devi, moving from tough to tender, from bandit to child with an easy naturalness. You see the first man obviously engaging in rape but thereafter you just see the man’s legs and feet, or a man coming through the door, but the cumulative effect is shocking. A gang rape later in the film is even more horrific because of the restraint with which it is filmed.
The way this movie is filmed is masterly. A terrific piece of acting by Seema Biswas. Knowing only brutality and rape as a child, Devi responds to her sexual feelings for Vikhram as if she is the dominator. The intolerable cruelty and degradation Devi faced forged her into a bandit with no regard for the hated upper castes and the caste system itself, which were responsible for much of her misery. However once she does not have this male protection she is fair game for any high caste man who wants her… so Devi placed herself in terrible danger which only changed when she joined Vikhram’s (Nirmal Pandey) bandits and slowly fell in love with him. A woman is her father’s property and then her brother’s until she marries and then she becomes her husband’s plaything. Sold into marriage at the age of 11 to a man three times her age Devi has to endure rape until she chooses to run away but this makes her vulnerable in rural India. This is a film that does not pull its punches, it paints a horrific picture of the degradation faced by the lower castes in India and by women in particular, and the utter disregard in which they are held by the upper castes. Both Devi herself and the Indian government tried to censor this film on its release and it is not hard to see why. Eventually she gave herself up and was imprisoned but on her release she became a successful politician until her assassination in 2001. In the early 80s, Phoolan Devi, a woman who led a gang of bandits in northern India was so well-known, and so courted by the media that she was more famous than a movie star. This is the true tale of a singular woman.