The impact was immediate and deep. Young women in small towns wrote to Shrivastava, saying, "You filmed my diary." Critics who had called it "porn" were shamed by the film’s tenderness. More importantly, it broke a dam. In the years that followed, Indian cinema saw a surge of female-led stories about desire— Veere Di Wedding , Manto , Parched —all indebted to the path Lipstick had chiseled.
The film was audacious, funny, and painfully intimate. It showed women masturbating, lying, stealing, and scheming for tiny pockets of joy. It didn't offer heroes or villains. It offered humanity. movie lipstick under burkha
But the story didn't end in theaters. When the film was submitted to the Oscars in 2018, it was disqualified for having "too much English dialogue" (a rule later changed). And the censor board’s original language—"lady-oriented"—entered the lexicon as a slur, a badge of honor. It revealed what the board truly feared: not sex, but female agency. The impact was immediate and deep
First, there was , a young college student and a burkha -clad beautician. By day, she was the pious daughter her conservative Muslim family expected. But by night, she shed the black robe, donned tight jeans and red lipstick, and sneaked into cinemas, swam in crowded pools, and dated a Hindu boy. She wasn't rejecting her faith; she was rejecting the suffocating version of it that left no room for her own skin. In the years that followed, Indian cinema saw
The board refused to certify it. Their reason? The film was "lady-oriented," with "sexual fantasies" and "audio pornography." They called it "dark," "vulgar," and "uncomfortable for women." They demanded 123 cuts—nearly half the film. One of the board members famously said, "The story is about their desire… which is not good for society."
Lipstick Under My Burkha is more than a film. It is a time capsule of the war over a woman's inner life. It asks us to look under the burkha—not of religion alone, but of politeness, marriage, age, and shame. And what it finds there is not a monster, not a sinner. Just a woman, reaching for a tube of red lipstick in the dark, about to paint a smile that is entirely her own.