The Kerala Story 2023

The Kerala Story is a 2023 Indian Hindi-language drama film directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah. It stars Adah Sharma, Siddhi Idnani, Yogita Bihani and Sonia Balani. The plot follows a group of women from Kerala who are coerced into converting to Islam and joining the Islamic State. Marketed as a true story, the film is premised on the Hindutva theory of "love jihad", and claims that thousands of Hindu women from Kerala have been converted to Islam and recruited in the Islamic State. However, the filmmakers had to accept the addition of two disclaimers – that the figures in the film were inauthentic, and that the film was a "fictionalised" depiction of events. The Kerala Story released in theatres on 5 May 2023. With a worldwide gross of ₹303.97 crore (US$32 million), it became the ninth-highest-grossing Hindi film of 2023. It was heavily promoted by the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leveraged the film in its campaigning for the 2023 Karnataka assembly election. The film was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews and panned by critics.