Busan Asian Cinema Fund Recipient ‘Mariam’ Tackles Plight of Migrant Workers, Illegal Surrogacy in India
Naman Ramachandran Arvind Pratap’s “Mariam,” which has post production support from the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Cinema Fund, tackles a range of social issues in India. Millions of families from rural India move to the big cities in search of employment and “Mariam” follows one such migrant worker family. The breadwinner is Mariam, who has to look after her three daughters and also takes on an illegal surrogate pregnancy to earn for her family in Mumbai. Pratap, who previously directed the acclaimed “The Reluctant Crime,” got the idea for the film from a newspaper article detailing changes in the Surrogacy Regulation Bill by the Indian Supreme Court, where single parents were excluded from surrogacy.