City Girls, featured in IDSFFK, describes cities as freer spaces than popular narratives
The glorification of village or small town life in contemporary fiction overlooks the lack of freedom and privacy that many, especially women, experience in such areas.
Priya Thuvaseri documentary city girls, screened in the competition section at the 13th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), takes a look at the other side, portraying the lives of two young women who ‘escape’ from small towns and find freedom in the city. succeeded in ,
The freedom they talk about often refers not to the lofty ideas associated with the word, but to the things that many people like with the freedom to wear clothes of their choice or move out of the house when they feel like it. The camera follows Umra and Kulsoom from Banda in Uttar Pradesh as they taste the new freedom in Delhi, where they have found employment.
But, their shift comes with its share of struggles, from overcoming parental pressure to stay behind, lying about getting a job when they were still looking for one, and so much in their admission. There were no high pay-level jobs. Despite all these challenges, the two are mostly seen talking positively about change, as the freedom they experience in the city is enough to make them ignore the rest of the struggle.
The documentary follows them in informal conversations within the home, recounting their experiences in the city, struggling to fit in, the fear of standing out from the city crowd, and the fear of being judged and oppressed by the bosses that surround them. One looks for other jobs. Screenshots of his Instagram pages, with photos of him at a party or strolling the streets, and short captions depicting his thoughts, also show how much life in the city means to him.
The COVID-19 pandemic came to him, like many others, as a bolt from the blue. Many young women had to return from cities reluctantly, either because of job loss or shifting to work from home. Yet, here, they talk about arranging to somehow get back to the city even before the office opens. city girls It’s an honest portrayal of how the “big bad city” becomes a place of self-realization for many women who lead suffocating lives in small towns.
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