The Kerala Story

Shalini Unnikrishnan, a woman who converted to Islam, shares her harrowing journey of aspiring to become a nurse, only to be abducted from her home and coerced by extremist groups. She was eventually manipulated into joining ISIS and ended up imprisoned in Afghanistan.

• Adah Sharma as Shalini Unnikrishnan / Fatima Ba
• Yogita Bihani as Nimah
• Sonia Balani as Asifa
• Siddhi Idnani as Geetanjali
• Devadarshini as Shalini's mother
• Vijay Krishna
• Pranay Pachauri
• Pranav Misshra[11]

The film was produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, who is also the creative director of the film.[1] It was released in theatres on 5 May 2023.[12]

Prior to its domestic release, the film went through CBFC scrutiny and received an A (adults only) classification following 10 modifications, including an interview with V. S. Achuthanandan, a former Kerala chief minister, where he stated that Kerala over the next two decades would become a Muslim-majority state as youngsters were being influenced to convert to Islam. Other cuts included verbal excisions of dialogues and inappropriate references to all Hindu Gods as well as Indian Communists.[13]

In the United Kingdom, the film's release was disrupted due to lack of a BBFC rating, resulting in massive outrage from several Indians in the UK who even claimed that the BBFC was deliberately withholding the film to pander to "certain groups."[14] On 16 May 2023, the film was cleared for theatrical release with an 18 classification; the board noted sexual violence was portrayed unflinchingly, alongside other complex themes.[15]

The Irish Film Classification Office gave it a 16 certificate, noting the film's portrayal of very strong sexual violence including rape, coercive control and sexual assault. Other flags included strong violence throughout with graphic injury detail, some strong language and very mature themes.[16]

The Australian Classification Board similarly passed it with an MA 15+ rating on the account of strongly impactful themes and violence.[17]

The Kerala Story is captioned as being based on a real-life incident, while the reliability of the statistics shown are not backed by any real evidence.[7][6][18] The makers of the film have claimed that the film is the true story of an instance of "love jihad",[5] which a Hindutva conspiracy theory about non-Muslim women romanced and lured into marriage to convert them to Islam.[22]The teaser, released on 3 November 2022,[23] featured the character of Fathima Ba — a Hindu Malayali nurse — who had converted to Islam and joined the ISIS, before ending up in an Afghan jail.[18] She claimed to be one of the 32,000 girls, from the Hindu and Christian communities, who are missing from Kerala and have been recruited to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) after being converted to Islam.[6] Sen, the director of the film, has made such claims for years;[18][6] in 2018, he had directed a documentary on the involuntary mass-conversion of 33,000 Hindu and Christian girls to Islam as part of an "international conspiracy" to render Kerala an Islamic state.[24][25][26]

While the events portrayed in the film are inspired by the accounts of three women from Kerala — who converted to Islam and traveled with their husbands to Afghanistan to join ISIS between 2016 and 2018 —, the claimed figures are wildy inaccurate, being based on mistranslations, misquotes and extrapolations from misrepresentations of unrelated statistics.[27][28][6] Experts from the Observer Research Foundation note that less than 200 Indians had joined ISIS and that Kerala, having over nine million Muslims, accounted for less than a quarter;[6] the figures posited in the film exceeded the entire strength of ISIS.[29]

Later, in response to litigation, the film-makers removed all promotional materials, including the teaser, that had the erroneous figure;[30] however, the film repeated the claims multiple times and once, raised it even higher to 50,000.[31]

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its associated organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have supported the film; the party used it for their political messaging in the campaigning for Karnataka assembly elections.[29][32]

Prime Minister Narendra Modi endorsed the film at an election rally, claimed that it unearthed a "conspiracy", and alleged that the Indian National Congress — which opposed the film — stood for terrorism.[32][33] BJP President J. P. Nadda held special screenings of the film and invited "young [Hindu] girls" to watch it with them.[32] The film was made tax free in Madhya Pradesh as well as Uttar Pradesh; both the states have BJP governments.[34][35] Organiser, the official mouthpiece of RSS, described the film as a "dangerous truth".[29]

• The Kashmir Files

• The Kerala Story at IMDb
• The Kerala Story at Bollywood Hungama