Dream Warrior Pictures, which produced the Tamil film Farhana, released a press statement on Thursday, May 11, stating that the film is “not against any religion or their sentiments.” Allegations that the film hurt the sentiments of the Islam religion had landed the Aishwarya Rajesh-starrer in controversy.
The teaser of the film was released on April 22 and the trailer on May 9. These show Aishwarya Rajesh as a mother who takes up a call centre job, which leads her to a slew of problems. The film is set for release on Friday.
Dream Warrior Pictures’s press statement said that it has been functioning with great social responsibility and work ethics. “Our films have spoken about religious harmony, social unity, and love. But the controversies created by a few people about Farhana, which has been duly censored by the government body, has pained us greatly. Farhana is not against any religion or their sentiments,” the company said.
The statement comes at a time when several Islamic outfits have opposed the movie’s release. Indian National League (INL) party leader 'Tada' J Abdul Rahim claimed that the movie was against Islamic beliefs. Talking to TNM, Rahim said that he lodged a complaint against the movie with the Chennai police commissioner's office in the second week of May.
On April 25 he filed a complaint with the Chennai Police Commissioner to ban Farhana. "Teaser of the movie has been shared on social media platforms. The scenes of the trailer depict a Muslim woman who does sex work across the world wearing burqa," he claimed in the complaint, urging the police to ban the movie. In the complaint, he also expressed concerns about the depiction of muslim women in the OTT-released film Burqa.
The statement by Dream Warrior Pictures further said, “We have never allowed, nor do we want stories that are against humanity and humaneness. We wish that our brothers and sisters who are creating controversies about our movie understand this. Tamil Nadu is a paradise for religious harmony, a soil that highly values works of art. It is not proper to oppose a Censor Board certified film before its release due to misconceptions and create controversies based on it. It will only show that the opposers have no proper understanding. A film is made with the contribution of several hundred people. We hope Tamil fans will support the film that is flawless in its intentions. Like in India, even in certain foreign countries, if a film has content that hurts religious sentiments, it'll be very difficult for the film to get past censorship. Especially in countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Oman, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, censor rules are strict. But in the aforementioned countries, Farhana has cleared the censorship process without even a minor tussle. We hope this makes things clear and evidently shows that Farhana is not a controversial film by any means. So friends who have not understood about our movie yet, kindly consider this explanation. We hope that everyone will join hands to give our movie a warm welcome.”
A Kind note to everyone from team #Farhana pic.twitter.com/mXb6lj6qIm
— DreamWarriorPictures (@DreamWarriorpic) May 11, 2023
Apart from Aishwarya Rajesh, the cast of the film includes Malayalam actor Anumol, director Selvaraghavan, Jithan Ramesh, and Aishwarya Dutta. The film is directed by Nelson Venkatesan and music is by Justin Prabhakaran. Dream Warrior Pictures has previously produced films Kaidhi, Aruvi, Theeran Athigaram Ondru, and Joker.