‘Afwaah’ review: Ineffective outrage over social media manipulation

In the twilight world of Hindi films about politics, there’s always an election about to take place, which justifies the murderous mayhem that ensues. For a film that has liberal hearts bleeding for an innocent butcher slaughtered during a riot, Sudhir Mishra’s Afwaah has an inordinately high body count. (The visual of the man begging for mercy with folded hands is deliberately reminiscent of that famous photo from the Gujarat riots.)

While Mishra’s previous political films like Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin and Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi were ruminations on the involvement of youth in grassroot causes, Afwaah seems to have been made to fit an agenda, to poke the sleeping lion in its cage without really stepping close enough to get harmed.

Most of the story takes place over one night, revisiting the format of Mishra’s thriller Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin. Mishra does make some valid points about fake news and viral tweets going out of control. But afwaah means rumour, which is actually quite different from spreading doctored videos.

The two people caught in the web woven by a ruthless bunch are Rahab Ahmad (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), the American-returned, upper-class Muslim man who has the superior and mostly naive idea that his campus talks are making a difference, and Nivedita Singh (Bhumi...

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