In 2014, the apex court of India declared transgender as the third gender, whose members could self-identify their gender and enjoy fundamental rights. This landmark judgment, although it changed things on paper, has not fundamentally changed societal perception of transgenders. This is reflected in the family relationship shown in a Deepa Mehta film. How does a mother come to terms with her son who has discovered her identity as a woman? This is the storyline of the 90-minute documentary I Am Sirat.
Directed by the Oscar-nominated film director and screenwriter Deepa Mehta and the star of the film Sirat Taneja, a transgender woman actor, the film explores the dual life of Sirat, who must act like a son while at home with her mother while being herself outside.
The film is shot using mobile-phone cameras. Sirat handles the self-documentation with vertical shots on her mobile, while Mehta films the horizontal shots, primarily in the form of interviews, on hers.
“I met Sirat in 2018 while shooting for the Netflix series Leila in which she played a transgender guard. We stayed in touch, and she told me she wanted a film made about her life to convince her mother to accept her as a daughter. That’s why I agreed to do this,” says Mehta.
Passing the mic
The film first premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Film at the London Film Festival that year. It was recently screened at Delhi’s India International Centre during the Engendered’s iView World Film Festival, and hosted by its curator, founder and director, Myna Mukherjee. “Our focus has always been gender and marginal voices and this film not only emphasises these voices but also passes the mic to them—half of the film is shot by a transgender woman,” says Mukherjee.
The film begins with a vertical shot of Sirat in an auto, changing from the clothes she wears at home as Aman into a dress, unconcerned about onlookers. It then cuts to Sirat’s home, where she talks to her mother as a son.
The locations in I Am Sirat are not extraordinary; they just happen to be the places Sirat regularly visits. The entire film follows Sirat’s daily journey: she leaves her home as Aman, goes to a rented place to change, heads to work, and then returns to the rented place to change back into Aman before going home at the end of the day. Mehta showcases Sirat’s struggle with living a dual life, transitioning between identities. “While we were shooting at her house, her mother was unaware of the film’s true subject. She thought it was about Aman,” says Mehta. The constant switching of identities, however, has been tough on Sirat. Sometimes she accidentally uses feminine verb-forms when speaking to her mother. “It’s very confusing. There have been times when my mother called for me, and I replied as a daughter, saying, ‘Mummy, mai aa rahi hu’,” she says.
Metaphors not the solution
The frequent transitions from Sirat to Aman are exhausting, and while the film effectively conveys this struggle, it lacks an emotional connection. For instance, Sirat mentions being thrown out of her house when she was younger, but the film does not explain how she made peace with living with her mother again.
The documentary feels like stepping into Sirat’s Instagram account and mindlessly scrolling through her reels. Furthermore, the switch from vertical to horizontal shots at times, feels like visual jerks.
Though Mehta insists the work is a collaboration and denies any creative differences between the directors, the film often suggests otherwise. The heavy use of metaphors and registers, while conveying strong messages, can seem forced. For example, the metaphor of Toba Tek Singh, a story by Saadat Hasan Manto about inmates in a Lahore asylum, some of whom were moved to India after Partition. In the end, one inmate sleeps under the barbed wires of no man’s land, not belonging to either country. This metaphor is used in the film to depict Sirat’s dual life, fearing that she, too, will end up in a no man’s land, belonging nowhere. Also, the film concludes with Sirat singing ‘Hum Dekhenge’,—Sirat, as seen in the film, usually seems to prefer tacky Bollywood favourites—a song chosen by Mehta, left mixed feelings. Faiz’s anti-establishment poem is a rebel anthem for sure but did Mehta have to push her hand so hard in a film that is mainly focused on Sirat gaining her mother’s acceptance?
Nevertheless, films like I Am Sirat are important because “they sensitise people and shift their perceptions of the world”, says Mukherjee. Sirat is also happy with the film’s reception. “I have yet to make my mother watch this film, but some of my relatives already have, and a few of them have accepted me as I am. ‘You can live however you want to,’ they said,” she says.