'Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga is like the DDLJ of LGBTQi'

Gazal Dhaliwal

Gazal Dhaliwal, activist/writer of Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga

"When I started writing this movie, I thought of all the straight romances I had seen. There was nothing explicit in them. When it comes to the LGBTQi community, it becomes about sexuality.

We wanted to make a movie about love and feelings. We wanted family audiences to come to the movie hall and watch it, just like they would go watch any other movie. I also wanted it to be far-reaching, because that's the way it will have impact. If more and more people watch it, then more and more people would be affected by it.

I also wanted to focus on the woman, as even in LGBTQi, a gay man has more agency than his female counterpart. Women are still invisible, and we wanted to get their voices across.

If you ask me, this movie is homosexuality 101. As we made it, we had to walk a thin line: we had to give the LGBTQi community a sense of romance and identification, and also convert the non-believer. To do that, we focused on family as much as the love between the two women.

I hope that the LGBTQi community enjoys the movie. It's the first mainstream movie, showing a gay lead's experiences with family, society and their lover. I saw a comment on Twitter that said that even the LGBTQi deserves a DDLJ of their own. If the community, which I belong to, feel five per cent of what people felt watching DDLJ, we have succeeded.

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