Ram Gopal Varma faces protest by women over explicit content in trailer

Suresh Dharur

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, January 21

The controversial Bollywood filmmaker, Ram Gopal Varma, finds himself in the eye of storm over his upcoming short film “God, Sex and Truth” featuring porn star Mia Malkova.

Several women took out a protest rally in the coastal Andhra city of Visakhapatnam demanding a ban on the movie for promoting obscenity.

The protesters, led by All India Democratic Women Association (AIDWA), burnt the effigy of the producer-director and raised slogans against him.

The trailer of the film, released recently, had gone viral on social media. The women protestors took objection to the explicit content of the trailer.

Earlier, BJP Mahila Morcha filed a complaint against the film and called for a ban on it.

“What is the message that Varma will be giving to the youth in India with such a dirty film?” asked K Nagalakshmi, the BJP women wing leader.

RGV, as the filmmaker is known in Bollywood circles, says that “God, Sex and Truth” is about telling the “truth behind sex as intended by God.”

“It has explicit nude imagery which will showcase each and every part of Mia Malkova’s beautiful naked body in a never before seen magnificence,” RGV had said in a statement.

“She also speaks graphically and hard sexual words, because the whole point of this endeavour is to enhance and elevate whatever people conventionally look down upon,” RGV added.

The film will release online on January 26.

The maverick filmmaker had recently courted a controversy over his proposed biopic on legendary Telugu film star and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister late NT Rama Rao.

The movie, tentatively titled “Lakshmi’s NTR”, seeks to tell the story of the matinee idol and the founder of Telugu Desam Party through the perspective of his second wife N Lakshmi Parvathi who is a persona non grata for the present TDP dispensation.

The film will particularly focus on the final stages of NTR’s life when he was tormented by the rebellion within his party led by his son-in-law N Chandrababu Naidu.

NTR, who founded the TDP in 1982, was dethroned by Naidu in a political coup in August, 1995. Crestfallen and heartbroken, NTR died a few months later.

Lakshmi Parvathi’s alleged interference in the party had led to the revolt and the subsequent split in the party.

The TDP leaders have warned that NTR’s fans would teach a lesson to Varma if the facts related to NTR’s life were distorted in the movie.

“Varma is known to crave for attention through courting controversies. Everybody knows what happened in NTR’s life after Lakshmi Parvathi’s entry,” the TDP politburo member and minister S Chandramohan Reddy said.

He also alleged that the main opposition YSR Congress Party, headed by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, was the driving force behind the movie project.

A YSRC leader from Chittoor district P Rakesh Reddy is one of the producers of the film which is expected to go to the floors in March this year.

However, Varma denied any political motive behind the project and said one of the producers’ political affiliation was just a “coincidence”.

“I have never been associated with any political party or ideology. I will stick to the truth” the filmmaker said.

“NTR’s story is like a Mahabharata and that kind of epic will have lots of chapters in it. We know of him when he was a superstar and when he rose up to be a great leader. But after she entered his life, there are only perspectives and conspiracy theories,” Varma said.

“It is the vulnerabilities in a man which will make one understand the person’s true strengths,” he said.