Akarsh Khurana’s adept direction has added a magical touch to the movie. The movie is based on Rashmi, an incredibly fast runner who dreams of crossing the finish line as an athlete and making a mark for her country. However, she soon understands that the race to the finish line has multiple obstacles, and what seems like an athletic competition turns into her personal battle for respect, honour, and her individual identity. The central topic of the movie is gender testing in sports.
We will agree that for movie that deals with such incidents a lot of research is undertaken by the makers. Director Akarsh Khurana shares his thoughts on the issue of gender testing and his reference points for research when he started work on Rashmi Rocket, “Gender testing, I think is a very grey area. I think understanding gender testing is very important and I keep saying this to go back into the history of gender testing and back in the days it was kind of brought into a play, it was because they were checking to see if there were any male imposters in the female sports events. Now that is a very different situation from what gender testing is doing right now."
He further adds, "Back in the day, of course, you are looking for an imposter, that’s a crime if someone is masquerading as a woman, of course, all sorts of rules are being broken and you’re checking then I think when things evolved it was also a kind of way to see if there was some kind of steroid usage happening and with soviet athletes at some point of time. And the thing is, it started with a certain intention and now it is kind of evolved into something that’s far more questionable, in terms of testing testosterone levels and deciding if you are, therefore, eligible for an event and the thing is that it does certainly seem discriminatory and unfair that based on something that is your genetic makeup, there is some sort of restriction being put on you, I don’t think that everything’s all right over there.”
Akarsh’s opinion is expected to strike a chord with sports aficionados all over the country. Produced by Ronnie Screwvala, Neha Anand, and Pranjal Khandhdiya, written by Nanda Periyasamy, Aniruddha Guha, and Kanika Dhillon and directed by Akarsh Khurana, ‘RASHMI ROCKET’ also stars Supriya Pathak, Abhishek Banerjee, Priyanshu Painyuli and Supriya Pilgaonkar.
Rashmi Rocket starring Taapsee Pannu is set to premiere on ZEE5 on 15th October
Image Source: Instagram/akvarious, Youtube/zee5