The upcoming film, “The Kerala Story,” directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah for Sunshine Pictures Private Limited, has generated reactions and controversy since its trailer release on April 26. The movie aims to depict the story of how women from the Indian state of Kerala were deceived and trafficked to the conflict zone of Syria, under the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The film focuses on the cases where ISIS used “love jihad” to lure 32,000 Kerala women to join them. The trailer shows how men were brainwashed into wooing Hindu and Christian women from Kerala, converting them to Islam and convincing them to join the ISIS and other Islamic war zones. These incidents happened between 2018 and 2019, when a growing number of Kerala youths were influenced by ISIS.
“The Kerala Story” is set to release worldwide on May 5, 2023. Adah Sharma plays the lead role of Fathima Ba, a converted Muslim woman who suffered a similar fate as a Hindu nurse. Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani, and Siddhi Idnani are also part of the cast, playing the roles of the other three women with Fathima.
The plot of the movie is based on the tragedy where about 32,000 women went missing in Kerala, allegedly brainwashed and lured by Muslim men who married and converted them, radicalized them, and then deployed them in terror missions in India and abroad for ISIS.
