Its rare that a Hollywood blockbuster touches on anything remotely LGBTQ, but Universal Pictures is about release Monkey Man a thriller about a fight club and the desire for retribution, but it’s also about the trans community in India.

The movie is the directing debut of Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire)  who is also the co-writer and star who told Variety how the film is an “anthem for the underdog, voiceless and marginalized.“

In the film, Patel plays a young man named Kid who earns money in an underground fight club and features a group of trans and gender-nonconforming characters who help Kid fight the rich and powerful elites he seeks revenge against. The inclusion of these characters was important to Patel, who said that Monkey Man provides representation for India’s “hijra” community — a Hindustani word that refers to someone who identifies as a third gender.

Patel explained “For me, it has become rigid over time. When you look at the old carvings in these temples in India, the freedom, the sexuality, all of it, the philosophy was so ahead of its time,  So I wanted to dive into it and make that the lore of the film.”

Monkey Man is now screening in movie theatres around the globe.

 

P.S. You may also like to check out Queerguru’s interview  with Samyuktha Vijayan about their remarkable filmmaking debut BLUE SUNSHINE based on their own experience as a transitioning in rural India  : see HERE