Gandu is an erotic black and white abstract film directed by Qaushiq Mukherjee.
The controversial Indian film, originally released in 2010 was considered so extreme and explicit that it was initially blocked in its home country.
There were several scenes that caused raised eyebrows but the most shocking was a sex scene that the filmmaker claimed was real – his actors engaged in real-life, unsimulated sex for the camera.
It faced a huge amount of controversy upon its initial release as audience members walked out.
The film follows the story of a frustrated teenage rapper who steals from his mother’s lover and then ‘embarks on a drug-fuelled rampage with a rickshaw puller’.
There are graphic sex scenes between Gandu’s mother played by Kamalika Banerjee and her lover Dasbabu played by Silajit Majumder.
However, the most shocking scene features lead actor Anubrata Basu and co-star Rii Sen.
At a Q&A at the 2011 Slamdance Festival, the director known as Q told Hammer to Nail that the actors were ‘good friends’ who had real sex and ‘really went at it’.
The film is also filled with explicit language and shows scenes of drug abuse.
Due to its controversial nature, the movie didn’t receive its first screening in the country until almost two years after its initial release.
Despite the backlash, it received positive reviews by some critics including Variety who dubbed it as a ‘high-energy example of a rarefield genre’. It also received a 68 per cent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.
One reviewer on IMDb commented: “The film consists of some erotic scenes which are explicit in nature but most certainly not pornographic in any way whatsoever.”
However, others disagreed with one user giving it 1/10 and slammed it as ‘porn! Nothing more, might be less!’
It’s not the first film of this nature. Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist saw the director draft in real porn actors for an unsimulated sex scene between Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Von Trier was also the filmmaker behind The Idiots which shares similar themes.
