Nation Without Women

Like Margaret Atwood's feminist nightmare “A Handmaid's Tale,” A NATION WITHOUT WOMEN takes place in the future; however its tone is not futuristic but regressive. Extrapolatng the barbaric custom of female infanticide, practiced in parts of India and China, to its logical, justly-Darwinian conclusion, filmmaker Manish Jh? envisions a barren, rural community called Matrubhoomi. For ages fathers here have routinely slain their girl babies, desiring only boys to perpetuate the family name and prestige. Now women appear wholly on the brink of extinction and the coarse local youth seek solace in mass-viewing of porno tapes. Meanwhile the elders – especially wealthy, high-caste Ramcharan, with six sons to consider – consult oracles and haggle with other villages to bring just one precious bride to Matrubhoomi. A naif might think that a young woman in this place would be a veritable queen, a goddess. No. She'd be prey. And when Ramcharan learns of a girl, a virgin beauty named Kalki, long protected by her peasant father, the stage is set for a societal apocalypse. (In Hindi with English subtitles)