Fatin (Sarah Hashmi), a Muslim woman in a lower-middle class family, is studying architecture in a Mumbai college. Her father (Vipin Sharma), a manager at a recording studio, can’t afford her tuition fees. Fatin needs a scholarship, and a local Islamic organisation is her best chance. For someone who lives in a cramped house — with her parents and a sister and a brother, who sleeps on the floor — a college degree, resulting in a job, is the only gateway to lasting freedom. But standing in Fatin’s way is she herself — or her gender and religion.
In this never-ending circus of identity politics, Fatin is both a spectator and a performer, hardly a person. Which choice is less unfortunate: winning the world and losing yourself or holding your ground but losing the herd’s approval — one that decides and decrees the rules of freedom? Shazia Iqbal’s 21-minute short, Bebaak, now streaming on Mubi, imagines a third possibility, where rebellion becomes responsibility.
There’s constant anxiety over identity here. At the start of the film, Fatin’s mother (Sheeba Chaddha) tells her to cover her head, as she’s going to a conservative Muslim neighbourhood, Bhendi Bazaar, for the interview. Fatin scoffs at the advice but, as a young girl used to a cosmopolitan college life, she knows that her identity follows her like a shadow — to blend is to hide. When Fatin’s friend messages her, asking, “Where is the interview”, she first types “Bhendi Bazaar” but quickly deletes it, opting for a more neutral “Town”. Trapped between the traditional ideas of propriety and the liberal definition of self, Fatin’s quest to find herself acquires a poignant urgency.
One of the most striking features of Bebaak is its use of space. Fatin’s house is noisy and busy, a place where contemplation is near impossible. So is her city: a clamouring, dripping, jostling thing — disfigured and disinterested — telling her to put up or shut up. A bulk of the film is set amid such chaos, in a house, an office, a bus, where clever framing and cutting heightens the sense of suffocation. Freedom in Mumbai, after all, can feel like a storied struggle: you climb one level, then another, and hope that the eternal stairs will somehow vanish.
Also read: In ‘Mee Raqsam’, The Struggles of a Muslim Girl Studying a ‘Hindu’ Dance Tell a Bigger Story
Iqbal is a sharp, confident filmmaker; she neither wastes time in exposition nor exaggerates a mundane reality. The film keeps its calm even during some of its most tense moments, when Fatin is grilled by a cleric (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) deciding the fate of her scholarship. He slyly judges the father for earning a living through music, inquires Fatin about her religious education. The scene is remarkably bare: no background music, a glass of chai on the table, some office paraphernalia, and a misogynist smiling occasionally — just another day in life.
A good film makes you worry about its climax. Surely, it won’t be this consistent, the cynic in you wonders — especially if it’s a short quasi-coming-of-age drama, as the temptation of a ‘liberating’ climax, at the cost of a credible story, is immense. Bebaak doesn’t suffer from such haste or indecision. In a film about big themes, the climax is about a small girl — her gaze, her desire, her expectations. By the time the film ends, we understand that Iqbal’s definition of freedom isn’t narrow or self-serving — it’s a bracing idea that crystallises Toni Morrison’s most memorable lines, “If you’re free, you need to free somebody else.”
Bebaak doesn’t interpret freedom as a lone spark — rather sees it as a series of interconnected crackers which, when lit, can burn the ground.