The Kerala Story Review | ‘The Kerala Story’ is an eye-opening bold film, shows the story of the jehadi trap

How do you criticize a film that documents the story of those affected by a controversial socio-political crime? ‘The Kerala Story’ is a feature film inspired by true events from the state of Kerala. It reimagines the plight of three women affected by such incidents (love-jihad, brutal inhuman crimes like rape, sexual slavery, radicalization, indigenization, and ISIS recruitment etc.) in an innocent looking town of Kasargod, Kerala. The film stars Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani and Siddhi Idnani in lead roles. ‘The Kerala Story’ begins with the opening sequence of Adah Sharma, injured in a UN detention centre, recollecting during interrogation how she was exposed as a trained ISIS terrorist. From the sandy terrains of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the film shifts to the lush green landscape of God’s own country. The opening credits song quickly introduces the audience to the backstory of the lead character Adah Sharma (Shalini Unnikrishnan aka Fathima), who joins a nursing college in Kasaragod, where she meets two more girls who have been brainwashed and converted to Islam. goes. What goes ahead with this is ‘The Kerala Story’.

The Kerala Story has chosen a communal agenda and a strong topic for discussion but in a most disturbing way. The film centers around the alleged radicalization and conversion to Islam of young Hindu women in Kerala, after which they are forced to join ISIS and turn into suicide bombers or sex slaves. Your eyes will be opened after seeing this story. The film also attacks how communism and religion are used to instill fear in people and how they are brainwashed. The Kerala Story has the theories of Karl Marx and it questions the Ramayana, which leads to a debate on religion, and thus, the film is facing all the controversies and backlash.

The Kerala Story The story is about three girls whose lives have been destroyed by ISIS. The story begins in the interrogation room where Adah Sharma reveals her horrific and tragic past and why and how she ended up there. His backstory revolves around four nursing college students. The story is narrated from Shalini’s perspective, where she talks about her roommates Geetanjali (Siddhi Idnani), Nimah (Yogita Bihani) and Asifa (Sonia Balani).

Shalini Unnikrishnan alias Fathima (Adah Sharma), a Hindu and a nursing student from Kerala is used by Islamic pawns, who turn her into an ISIS terrorist. Also, the film highlights the ‘love jihad’ propaganda, where Muslim men force Hindu girls to convert to Islam and abandon their families. Shalini’s roommate Asifa has a secret agenda to expose her roommates and convert them to Islam. The film demands empathy. It exposes a whole nexus of undercover and converted women from Kerala and people supporting terrorism and sending converted women to Syria through Pakistan and Afghanistan, who are either sex slaves or suicides Suffers the pain of being attacked. There is a special scene where Fatima (aka Shalini) is raped by her own husband despite being pregnant.

The screenplay of ‘The Kerala Story’ is also very engaging and keeps you hooked till the end of the film. This dramatization of the lives of the three leads and the continuous build up to the release at the end of the film adheres well to the three-act structure. ‘The Kerala Story’, in this regard, does not experiment much with narrative structure. It is more concerned with revealing the story in a particular way so as to make people aware. When information is disseminated with the aim of educating the audience through a film, it becomes a different kind of cinema. Especially when the depiction of different communities is involved…

Coming to the performances, Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani, and Siddhi Idnani are all spot on and deliver commendable performances.

The Kerala Story is also thematically rich. Hindu religious worship, atheism, communism, and the process of inducing Islam and Sharia law depicted in the film are challenging enough to raise a different level of debate. The film highlights a brutality – the extremes of toxic masculinity, the stretching of innocence and the influence of company at a young age, as well as some ideological debate, but in a very light and logical way so that the whole brainwashing process is not but inevitable. . However, one thing that really bothers about ‘The Kerala Story’ is its background score. It’s pretty deafening.