Sherni, Vidya Balan’s next is all set to release on the 18th of June on Amazon Prime Video. Sherni was recently announced to be a direct to OTT release, making this the second movie from Vidya Balan to come directly on an OTT platform, the first being Shakuntala Devi. Sherni is a unique story of a woman forest officer and not many movies have been made based on the genre. With everything, the hype and Vidya Balan’s unique choice Sherni will definitely be something to look out for.
Sherni, as we know, follows the “man-wildlife conflict” genre, which hasn’t been explored much in Bollywood. It’s not like there are no movies on it, there definitely but the number is extremely less and not much of them focuses entirely on this specific topic. Recently Rana Dagubatti starrer “Haathi Mere Saathi ” was supposed to release in the Hindi theatres but due to the pandemic, the date got pushed back indefinitely. It saw a successful theatrical release as “Kaadan” in Tamil and Telugu theatres.
Kaadan followed the plot of “man-wildlife conflict” pretty well as it is based specifically around the relations humans have with animals and what happens when big corporations want to take over the land that used to be the home for these animals. Besides Kadaan, Bollywood movies like Vidyut Jammwal’s “Junglee”, tried to bring this concept but failed to please the audience.
If one goes back to a certain time in 2000-10s, one can think of Ajay Devgn starrer “Kaal”, which talked about tigers and poachers and even was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, but its fear factor and eerie plot took over the main purpose of the story. But, with “Sherni”, finally it seems like Bollywood is making the right choice and the right story for such an important topic to be shown on screen.
Man-animal conflict is one of India’s rising issues and has been a major one for the past few decades now, as population increases and forests being taken over, the conflicts have become way more common. While some receive national attention, some don’t as villagers end up dealing with it most of the time.
From the trailer, one can make out that the movie tells the story of a woman forest officer that is ready to fight the issue of a man-eating tiger in the dense jungles, which has been a major problem. Apparently, the movie is also based on real life incidents making the story even more interesting. But along with this major issue, “Sherni” also focuses on the gender troubles one has to face in jobs of forest departments and such.
“Sherni” can be the beginning of a very important genre in Bollywood, even though the genre already has few such movies in its bag. With inspiring stories all around and creative filmmakers, producers, and top notch production quality, Bollywood definitely can become a hub for such interesting topics and genres.