Mira Nair’s film ‘risks insulting Islam’ suggests UNDP

Rome – A controversy, involving film director Mira Nair, has hit the 3rd Rome Film Festival (22-31 October, 2008). The United Nations Development Programme has disowned its own film “How Can It Be?”  by Mira Nair, exploring gender equality in a story set in Brooklyn, New York, in which a Muslim immigrant woman finds the courage to leave her husband and young son for another (married) man. The UNDP, instead of sponsoring the project, has pulled out.

It was seven years ago when wealthy nations made solemn pledges to the world’s poor. As a result eight top directors joined forces on Thursday, October 22, to review the UN Millennium Development Goals in their movie “8” at the Rome Film Festival. Mira Nair was among them.

Mira Nair- the filmmaker
She’s every filmmaker’s dream. Her first feature film Salaam Bombay! (1988), the story of a group of children surviving on the streets of Bombay, was nominated for an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It also won the Camera D’Or (for best first feature) and the Prix du Publique (for most popular entry) at the Cannes Film Festival as well as 25 other international awards. Since then Mira Nair, pictured above, hasn’t looked back. The director of Mississippi Masala (1991), The Perez Family (1995), Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996), My Own Country (1998), Monsoon Wedding (2000), Hysterical Blindness (2002), Vanity Fair (2004) and The Namesake (2006) has also directed a number of documentaries such as So Far From India and The Laughing Club of India.

The Controversy
Each director takes a different angle to show how poverty, climate change, lack of access to education and basic health facilities are affecting the world’s needy but also those living in the rich West.

“In April 2008, the UNDP came to us and demanded that we pull Mira Nair’s film or they would withdraw their logo from the project. They said it risked insulting Islam,” French producer Marc Oberon said after a press screening in Rome.

“We decided we could not take it out, so they pulled out.”

UNDP spokesman Adam Rogers told Reuters the agency had felt Nair’s work "would get caught up in controversy.”

“We were afraid it would bring the wrong kind of attention to the cause of promoting gender equality,” Rogers said by phone from Geneva. He said the European Union had also backed out of the project.

Nair, in Rome to promote “8,” defended her choice, saying it was about a woman’s right to express herself. “It’s a storm in a teacup frankly. It’s not what the film deserved,” she said. “My film is inspired by a true story and was written by the person who lived that story. Freedom does not come neatly packaged. It comes with pain,” she said.

“I also wanted to make the film because of the reaction in the West to any woman who lives under a hijab or a burqa. They are usually identified as women who have no rights and are submissive ... which is completely untrue.”

Oberon said the UNDP had put pressure on some film festivals, including Cannes, not to screen “8,” but the UNDP denied this.