Not enough films on women and Partition: Vidya Balan

In her next film Begum Jaan, Vidya Balan will be seen as a 'madam' who finds her brothel torn apart by the Pak-India Partition.

Saying that our knowledge of Partition is limited to what our textbooks tell us, Vidya shared that Begum Jaan will be an interesting story because "there are not many films on Partition and not on women especially as in what happened to them." Vidya said in an interview.

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In the film, half of the brothel is in Pakistan, while the other half lands up in India. The film depicts the women's struggle for their rights.

Vidya Balan also touched on violence in the film, saying it features a lot of “emotional and mental” violence, which was difficult for her to bring out convincingly.

“I am the madam of a brothel and the film is set in the Partition times and we are at the risk of losing our house, our space so there is lot of emotional, mental and sexual violence and not physical violence. It was difficult to do the film as I am doing it for the first time."

Vidya hopes that the film also changes people's perception about women working at brothels.

“People will think about how they think of women and prostitutes. A lot of things that I have felt strongly about have found voice in this film. I don’t know about that as it would be presumptuous of me to hope for such a big change.”

Begum Jaan comes out on April 14.