From Alia Bhatt to Karan Johar, everyone in Bollywood is raving about Haq, starring Emraan Hashmi and Yami Gautam, based on the Shah Bano case. Over a phone call, Director Suparn Verma tells us about how
the theatrical film, once released on Netflix, has shot to the top.
How does it feel when a theatrical release gets its due in such a big way on OTT?
I knew that once it reaches OTT, it's going to be the next big jump for Haq. But the response from the audience has been just...I mean, sometimes you expect a tsunami, but you don't realize how big a tsunami its going to be! I’ve had people calling from Nigeria and Canada, and its trending as the number 1 movie in across the Arab countries, all our neighbours like Sri Lanka and Nepal, everywhere. Every single day I’m getting around 200 messages, calls and DMs, so its just been crazy. And today morning (Sunday), you wake up to Alia Bhatt having watched the film and loving it.
How and when did you decide to make a film on this topic?
For me, it was a very important story waiting to be told all these years. And the more I researched, I realised nothing really has changed. Women still live in a man's world. And I wanted to make a very feminist take on this issue where Shazia could be literally be Sudha or Sandra. It's not her religion that makes her who she is, and it could be identifiable with every single woman on the planet. And that's exactly what's happened.
So when Reshu (the film’s writer) and I sat down and we started working on the film, that was our biggest intent, to kind of encourage conversation, be respectful, be mindful, and open up the vista in a much larger fashion and bring to fore the struggles faced by women all over the world. And to find that sisterhood somewhere, somehow, that kernel of truth, of emotional honesty. And I'm glad that the story resonated with Yami right from the beginning, and she was on board. So that when I was writing it itself, I could, you know, weave it in, knowing that Yami's playing Shazia Bano. And the way Imran wholeheartedly just got on board and the gusto with which he performed, honestly, it takes so much of years of hard work and understanding of mastering his craft that you literally had Yami and Imran at the peak, at the right time where I could work with my actors in a way where they could kind of completely surrender to their characters. We could create an ecosystem with great actors like, you know, Sheeba Chaddha, Danish Hussain and the others and create that universe which was 40 years ago and live it where audiences are living and breathing an entire timepiece and realizing the more things change, the more things remain the same and that hits even harder.
What are the facets of the case you discovered during research which were a revelation to you too?
What I came to know during the making is that the concept of Talak Talak Talak and divorce doesn’t even exist. There is no such thing. There's no such concept in the Quran. It's given over a period of time exactly the way modern day separations take place. See, divorce or decoupling is not the issue, it's how it's done. It needs to be done with dignity and respect. And when someone uses emotions or faith to hide behind by misinterpreting it, that becomes a problem. It's the same thing I examined when I was making Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai (2023, starring Manoj Bajpayee and based on godman Asaram). So for me faith is key. In Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai, Manoj was a Shiv Bhakt, and it starts with him literally pouring milk on the shivling.
In Haq, we deliberately made our character of Shazia Banu a Maulvi's daughter and who may not have been very well educated, but she knew the Quran inside out- and that's what's I think hit home most with every audience of every community. Because faith is important to everyone and faith is a very personal thing. The minute you have a third person interpreting your faith for you, it starts getting coloured in that person's voice or tone and then there is interpretation of room for misuse or mischief as well. And you've seen this across centuries.
