PC Sorcar's daughter to play transgender in Bengali movie

Renowned magician PC Sorcar's daughter Mumtaz plays the role of a transgender in an upcoming movie, dealing with the subject for the first time in Bengali films.

The subject of male transgender has been handled in several movies earlier, the most memorable of which are late Rituparno Ghosh's Chitrangada and Kaushik Ganguly's Arekti Premer Galpo.

The film Conditions Apply talks about the struggle of a successful heroine to remain in the film industry once her sexual orientation is known," Mumtaz told PTI.

She was speaking in between shooting at the heritage Lahabari in north Kolkata.

Talking about transgenders, the actress who cut her teeth in the hugely successful Bhuter Bhobisyot , a satirical comedy, said, "We seldom consider them as fellow human beings and that is why in our society people with alternative sexualities feel inhibited and are scared of abuse and ridicule."

Director Amitava Bhattacharya said his film threw a question on how somebody could be ostracised for things he/she was not responsible for.

The director said, "There was a silent revolution going on about rights of the LGBT community and I have chosen the filmmaking style of Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, two of my gurus in cinema."

Bhattacharya said that he and the producers had a plan to take the film to premier film festivals as well as smaller festivals across Europe and North America before releasing it commercially.