Anubhav Sinha’s Assi puts kids in the front row of trauma and trial, refuses to look away

In most films dealing with sexual violence and trauma, children are kept at a careful distance — as if their absence can preserve some illusion of innocence. Assi rejects that instinct completely. Here, children are not shielded. They are made to witness. Their presence in spaces like court hearings feels deeply uncomfortable. It almost makes you question the staging itself. Should they be here? Should they be hearing this? That discomfort, it turns out, is precisely the point.

When Parima’s husband Vinay (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) rushes to the hospital after learning of the assault, he brings his young son Dhruv with him. As a viewer, you register it instantly — why has he brought the child? The question sits with you, unanswered, through the shock and the chaos of that scene. And then, in the next scene, it is addressed. When Vinay’s friend Kartik (Kumud Mishra) asks him why Dhruv is there — why he has been brought to witness all of this — Vinay replies simply: “Ye sab ghar pe bhi to aayega na (All of this is coming home anyway).”

Vinay is acknowledging what is already true: that the fallout of the assault has already entered their home, is already in the air of every room, is already in the silences. Vinay does not tell Dhruv directly what has happened to his mother. But he keeps him present; he keeps him watching. Because sending him away, pretending nothing has changed would be its own kind of lie.

Assi understands something that most social dramas prefer to avoid: sexual violence does not leave the house after the crime is reported. It stays and rearranges everything. And the first person to feel that rearrangement is usually the child.

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The courtroom as classroom

In another scene, when the presiding judge, played by Revathy, notices children from Parima’s school sitting in the gallery, she questions why they are there. Raavi answers: if this is happening in their world, why should they be barred from seeing how the justice system deals with it?

A still from Assi.

By the end of the scene, the judge turns to the children and says: do better than us, words carrying the weight of an entire generation’s failure. Because the children in that courtroom are not watching a distant case. They are watching what happens to a woman they know, their teacher, and they are watching how the adults around her respond. The question is not whether children should be shielded from that. The question is whether shielding them has got us anywhere.

What makes Sinha’s use of children powerful rather than manipulative is his restraint. Dhruv does not weep in ways designed to make the audience weep. The schoolchildren in court room are not shown reacting. They simply sit there and watch, as children always do, absorbing the world adults have made for them. The discomfort belongs entirely to the adult viewer.

The film extends its argument beyond the hospital and the courtroom in one of its most jarring subplots. When news of Parima’s assault spreads, the film shows how her own students discuss it in a WhatsApp group. The conversation among them is not horror or grief. It is not even indifference. It is boys, children she taught, making sexual jokes about her assault. This is the moment where Assi widens its frame from one crime to a culture. It is not asking what kind of men commit rape. It is asking how boys are taught to think about women before they become those men. The film is clear-eyed about this – misogyny is socially learned, carefully rehearsed, and passed down early.

The last sequence from the child’s eye

The film’s closing sequence places Dhruv upstairs, watching the chaos outside the courtroom unfold below him. The camera shifts to a vantage point above, aligned with Dhruv’s gaze – we see the scene the way he sees it. It is a deliberate formal choice, and it is the right one to end on. Because what the film has been arguing all along is that this is already his world. The adults did not protect him from it by keeping him out of it. They built it for him, handed it to him, and now he is watching it from above, trying to make sense of what he sees.

A still from Assi.

In Sinha’s own words

In a conversation with SCREEN, Anubhav Sinha explained his reason for making children so central to the film: “To me, that’s the last and probably the only refuge. We’ve messed up and failed. And the sooner we accept it, the sooner it gets better.”

Assi is not a perfect film. Its vigilante subplot is unevenly handled. Its runtime tests patience. But its choice to keep children inside the story rather than outside it, to refuse the comfortable boundary between what adults endure and what children are allowed to see — is both its most contentious decision and its most honest one.

Rape culture is not an adult problem that exists somewhere beyond the reach of the young. It is taught. It is inherited. It is learned in ordinary rooms, in WhatsApp groups. Innocence is not lost in a single moment. It is slowly shaped by what is repeatedly witnessed — and by what adults repeatedly choose not to say.

In Assi, children are present because the future is already in the room. And it is watching everything.

Disclaimer: The film’s exploration of sexual violence and its impact on the family unit involves themes of significant emotional distress and trauma. This content is intended for mature audiences and serves to highlight systemic social issues rather than provide clinical or psychological advice.

If you or someone you know is struggling with the emotional impact of trauma or experiencing psychological distress, please reach out to a professional mental health counselor or a dedicated support service. Help is available through the following helplines:

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