Paradha

Several scenes show men slapping their children’s faces. A man prepares to strike a woman with a brick, but the act is interrupted.

A woman submits to having her hands bound and weighted before walking into water as part of a ritual sacrifice, but she is prevented from drowning at the last moment. Further scenes of moderate threat include ones in which another woman struggles through a painful and life-threatening birth.

Bad language includes ‘shit’, ‘bloody’, ‘fricking’, ‘freaking’, ‘damn’, ‘hell’ and ‘God’.

Occasional scenes involve sexist views and behaviour, including ones in which the female inhabitants of a village are required to cover their faces for fear of unleashing an ancient curse, and others in which a woman is sidelined at work because of her gender; these occur in the context of an overall theme of female empowerment.

A group of men attack and restrain a distressed woman, running their hands over her body and starting to pull at her clothes, during a sustained scene of attempted rape. A shorter version of the sequence is later repeated in flashbacks. A shadow puppet performance of a folk legend contains references to ‘evil men’ having ‘forced themselves’ on a pregnant woman before burning her alive.

There are scenes of emotional distress and bereavement. Other scenes contain non-graphic references to a curse which supposedly causes infants within a community to be stillborn.