Saucy Deep Dives: Verna

Sarees on Screen

Trigger Warning: Discussions of sexual assault, r*pe, victim shaming, honor killing, and other forms of sexual violence and abuse. For anyone who may find these topics unsettling, we recommend prioritizing your mental health and not engaging with the following content.
In this Saucy Deep Dive, we tackle Shoaib Mansoor's Verna, a controversial release from Pakistan dealing with themes of r*pe and sexual violence.
Verna tells the story of a woman navigating societal and institutional hurdles as she attempts to seek justice as a victim of sexual violence. When both her family and the justice system fails her - she has to take matters into her own hand.
When a recent study from Pakistan showed that movies depicting r*pe will almost always kill off the victims of sexual violence, it is no surprise that Verna drew so much uproar. This is a story of a survivor.
Survivors in South Asia often have no institutional or social support available to them. Neither do their cinematic counterparts. Verna does an amazing job of exploring these challenges with an empathetic lens. It also highlights the anger that society feels towards survivors who have the audacity to seek justice. It is truly a grueling watch.
In this episode, we discuss the limitations of movies depicting r*pe revenge fantasies, the recurring issue of ableism in South Asian films, and the lack of intersectionality in discussions about sexual violence.
While it is absolutely an accomplishment that this movie even exists, it is also important to ask how well it presents the issues it hopes to shed a light on.

To know more about our thoughts and see how Verna fared on the Sauce Meter (our in-house feminist film rating system), check out the extended show notes on our website.

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