A good actor will go to great lengths to understand their character in order to portray its most accurate version and Indian actor Yami Gautam is seemingly not one to take shortcuts.
In an interview with the BBC Asian Network , the director of her project Haq , Suparn Verma, said he had her learn the Holy Quran and understand the Quranic dialect of Arabic for four months for her role in the movie.
The film follows the story of Shazia Bano, the wife of a lawyer in 1970s India whose husband marries another woman and refuses to pay her agreed upon maintenance. When Bano takes her husband to court, he divorces her.
Verma told host Haroon Rashid the research for the movie was extensive. “We spent almost a year and a half understanding Islamic law.”
He said we lived in an “age of misinformation” where people like Andrew Tate had followers among men and women. “Everybody has information, you don’t know whether it’s right or wrong. In that space, I wanted Haq to be a voice of reason.”
The director said he had spent his whole life with Muslim friends and felt he had a certain responsibility to them “as an Indian”.
Aside from his goal of correcting “misnomers when it comes to Islam,” Verma said the idea was to show just how little the world had changed for women since the 1970s. “They lived in a man’s world then, they live in a man’s world now. They fight the same glass ceiling, the same biases.”
Haq is based on the true story of Shah Bano Begum, who won a Supreme Court of India case against her husband in 1985 and secured her right to maintenance. The case is considered a watershed moment for the rights of Muslim women in India.
The filmmaker said he was overwhelmed by how many people the story resonated with. “Honestly, you hope for a wave of love. You never expect a tsunami of connection the way Haq has [received].”
