Kiran Rao Talks Toronto Feminist Romp ‘Lost Ladies’: ‘We’re Taking Apart Patriarchy Without a War’

variety.com:

Naman Ramachandran Indian filmmaker Kiran Rao’s sophomore effort, “Laapataa Ladies” (“Lost Ladies”), bows as a Centrepiece selection at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Set in 2001 in rural India, the film follows two young brides wearing identical crimson veils who get swapped during a train ride to their husbands’ villages after their weddings.

It is based on “Two Brides” by Biplab Goswami, one of the winning scripts at the Cinestaan India’s Storytellers Contest, where Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan, one of the producers of “Lost Ladies,” was on the jury.

The script was subsequently worked on by Sneha Desai and Divyanidhi Sharma, keeping Goswami’s vision intact. “The script talks about women and opportunities and ideas that I’m very attracted to, especially freedoms for women,” Rao tells Variety. “The idea of these two girls on an adventure, trying to find their way, trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives, how they can make the best of what’s been given to them, jumping off that train — it was very exciting to see what we could do with two young girls who come from very different head spaces, but ended up being changed by this swap.” While the tone of the film is light-hearted, the issues tackled are deadly serious. “We have, obviously, violence against women and quite horrible things that happen to women in India and the story could have gone in any direction, really.