2018: Women empowerment in Hindi cinema

From showing a pregnant woman in her early 50s at centrestage in a mainstream film to pretty faces of Hindi cinema being cast as characters celebrating their sexual desire unabashedly – 2018 offered some milestones for women empowerment in Hindi cinema. With the so-called "woman centric" films surpassing the Rs 100 crore mark to a male superstar narrating a story on menstruation hygiene or a woman director's making it as India's Oscar entry, this trend seems to have here to stay. 

This, in the same industry that finally saw a collective consciousness on the darkest and dirtiest side of the business emerge as women came out with some heart-wrenching stories of sexual harassment, courtesy the #MeToo movement.

Following last year's trend of Hindi films like Lipstick Under My Burkha, Bareilly Ki Barfi and Tumhari Sulu, stories told through the female gaze in the narrative continued this year with films like Rima Das' Village Rockstars, Meghna Gulzar's Raazi, Nandita Das' Manto or Leena Yadav's Rajma Chawal.

It's also noteworthy how both Badhaai Ho and Raazi are centred on female characters, but none of them was marketed with the "woman-centric" flag. Veere Di Wedding, featuring Sonam Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Swara Bhaskar and Shikha Talsania, too clearly promoted the film with a #notachickflick tag. On digital entertainment platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, actor Kubra Sait played a transgender character in 'Sacred Games' and performed a frontal nudity scene, Rajshri Deshpande went topless for a scene in the same series, while Swara, Kiara Advani and Shweta Tripathi performed masturbation scenes in various projects, breaking the rules surrounding portrayal of women on-screen.

"If we actors are performing a scene without inhibition, please do not set us aside with the tag 'bold'... It has more to it." Attempts to project or portray women breaking the social norms also courted criticism.

Upcoming year 2019 will be starting with a woman-led film like Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi, which will carry forward the hope of celebrating more stories about strong women on the silver screen.