“Land.Gold.Women” – not your usual Bollywood drama: an honour killing in leafy English suburbia

Mumbai is the centre of India’s film industry, where hundreds of “Bollywood” movies are produced every year. Shortly before the major Indian festival of Diwali one of the most expensive and extravagant films produced here, “Ra One”, hit the screens both in India and London. Reportedly costing over $30M the film is produced by, and stars, one of Bollywood’s biggest names, Shah Rukh Khan.

At the same time as the publicity rolled for Ra One, another film of a very different sort, but also with significant Indian backing, was holding some of its first showings in Mumbai. “Land.Gold. Women “ has been directed by Avantika Hari , an Indian who studied film making in London.

“Land. Gold. Women. ”, filmed entirely in Birmingham, has no Bollywood razzmatazz, dancing and the almost inevitable happy ending. Instead, in just 95 minutes, it is a powerful and moving account of how a seemingly happy British Indian university professor’s family’s life is changed for ever by the arrival of a relative from the Punjab, intent on arranging a marriage for their 17 year old daughter. The family discover that the teenager has an English boyfriend, and soon events take dramatic turns as the couple run away from their homes.

Their visit to the police station produces no help, and the girl decides to call her father and return home, with consequences she and her boyfriend could never have imagined – an “honour killing”, as she embraces her father, with the knowledge and complicity of the parents. The girl’s mother, in a scene which could be straight out of a Hitchcock thriller, is seen desperately trying to scrub the kitchen clean in their four-bedroomed home in a leafy Birmingham suburb, as the most savage murder takes place in the hallway.

In a neat device the film is inter-laced with discussions between the girl’s convicted murderer – her father – and his lawyers. The English barrister and his Pakistan-British assistant also debate the moral outrage created by this honour killing, and whether any possible defence could or should be made for it.

The discussion in Mumbai’s National Centre for the Performing Arts after the screening of “Land.Gold. Money” with its director was, once viewers’ emotions had returned to near normal, an insight for many of us. She said that, far from the almost incredulous view that such killings could “never take place in Britain”, there were several a year, and many more in numerous countries with different religions and cultures.

I don’t think I was alone in leaving the preview theatre in a state of shock about the savagery we had viewed on screen. The film put a whole new perspective on the significance of the support provided by our Consular team in India – including Mumbai – for women under the threat of a forced marriage, or worse.