Nandita adds voice to TIFF's equality call

Key movie industry women from across the world, including Indian actor and director Nandita Das, took the stage Saturday morning for the 43rd Toronto International Film Festival's 'Share Her Journey' rally to draw attention to the urgent need for gender equality behind the camera and on the screen.

Coming less than a year after Harvey Weinstein was knocked off his position of immense power by sexual assault allegations, the initiative recognised that the industry, and the world, would be a better place if it gave more space to women's voices.

Canadian singer-songwriter Molly Johnson got the crowd, half of which was male, into the swing of things by crooning the rally anthem: Sing your protest song as you march along. Activists carried placards declaring that "man of quality do not fear equality" and wore badges that said "I stand with women in film".

Das, the second speaker of the day after Oscar-winning actor Geena Davis, said, "We all have multiple identities, but I cannot get away from my gender identity. I now completely own my identity as a woman director. We all must."
Das, whose second directorial venture, "Manto", had its North American premiere in TIFF later in the day, said, "On the Indian subcontinent, we live in several centuries. It's a land of paradoxes. The South Asian nations have had women heads of state, but the sex ratio here is alarming. Girls are killed in the womb."
Davis, who founded the Geena Davis Institute of Gender in Media in 2007, said "I'm heartened by TIFF's 50:50 by 2020 initiative."
She said that there should be "no more missed opportunities when it came to making movies and television shows more gender balanced."