On finding freedom in the city

City Girls, screened at the IDSFFK, speaks about cities as liberating spaces as against popular narrative

The glorification of village or small town life in contemporary narratives tends to overlook the lack of freedom and privacy that many, especially women, experience in such areas.

Priya Thuvasseri’s documentary City Girls, screened in the competition section at the 13th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), takes a look at the other side, portraying the lives of two young women who managed to ‘escape’ small towns and find freedom in the city.

The freedom that they talk about often does not signify the lofty ideas associated with the word but the things that many people take for granted from the freedom to wear the clothes of their choice or to step out of the house when they feel like. The camera follows Umra and Kulsum from Banda in Uttar Pradesh as they savour the newfound freedom in Delhi, where they have found employment.

But, their shift comes with its share of struggles, from overcoming parental pressure to stay behind, lying about having landed a job when they were still searching for one, and having to make do with the not-so-high salary in their entry-level jobs. Despite all these challenges, the duo is seen mostly talking positively about the shift, because the freedom that they experience in the city is enough to make them ignore the rest of the struggles.

The documentary captures them in casual conversations within the household, recounting their experiences in the city, of struggling to fit it, the fears of standing out from the city crowd, and of being judged and about the harassment from bosses that makes one of them look for other jobs. The screenshots of their Instagram pages with photographs of them at a party or simply having a walk on the roads, and the short captions that reflect their thoughts, also signify how much life in the city means to them.

The COVID-19 pandemic had come for them, like many others, as a bolt from the blue. Many young women had to reluctantly return from the cities, either due to loss of jobs or due to a shift to work from home. Yet, here, they talk about somehow managing to come back to the city, even before the offices open up. City Girls is an honest portrayal of how the “big bad city” becomes a space for self-realisation for many women who live a suffocated life back home in small towns.

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