A complaint has been reported against Anurag Kashyap’s short film, which is on Netflix’s “Ghost Stories.”
Netflix India has received a complaint about Anurag’s short film which was released in the 2020 anthology, “Ghost Stories”. This is a prime example of grievances registered after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting formulated the Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics and Code) rule in 2021 earlier this year.
Ghost stories are an anthology of horror films. It follows up the filmmaker’s 2018 anthology Lust Stories.
The complaint has objected to a scene in the short film in which Shobhita Dhulipala’s character eats a foetus after suffering a miscarriage. The complaint notes, “The scene is not required for the story, and if the creators wished to add such a scene, there should have been a trigger warning for women who have gone through the trauma of miscarriages.”
According to reports, complaints must be registered within 24 hours and addressed at the earliest. The report quoted the Netflix India spokesperson as saying, “As this was a partner-managed production [RSVP Movies and Flying Unicorn Entertainment], we reached out to the production company to share the complaint.”
Before the rules, OTT and digital platforms were largely unregulated. With the introduction of new laws, many believe it to be an effort to moderate and impose restrictions on digital creators. “So it started… A complaint came to Netflix on Ghost Stories. This is the end,” Anurag wrote in an Instagram Story that is no longer visible on his profile but was viewed by MediaNama.
Netflix has in the past received a lot of backlash for shows like A Suitable Boy and Sacred, while Prime videos have experienced the same with Family Man and Tandav.