Haq (2025) Review!!

Synopsis – A national battle for justice, faith, and women’s rights, stemming from a woman’s legal battle against her ex-husband for abandoning her and their children, inspired by the historic Shah Bano case.

My Take – While most of the filmmakers in the Hindi film industry seem to be concerned with delivering the next safe mainstream choice, the sub-genre of courtroom dramas seems to be the only one left which dares to risk under the guise of entertainment. Often acting as a stark reminder of what Hindi cinema in general once stood for i.e. courage, conviction, and storytelling rooted in uncomfortable truths.

Such is also the case of this latest Suparn Verma (Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena, Aatma) directorial which adapts journalist Jigna Vora’s 2025 book ‘Bano: Bharat Ki Beti‘, and is inspired by the Shah Bano case that made headlines and generated controversy in the 1980s, as the Muslim divorcee had filed a petition for maintenance that her ex-husband Mohammed Ahmad had stopped paying her, leading to the earliest demand for the abolition of triple talaq (divorce) and a Uniform Civil Code.

And told with enough restraint and authenticity, the film does exactly what it sets out to do by delivering a thought-provoking drama that allows us to see how an ordinary woman found extraordinary strength and resilience to fight for her cause, and create history, without ever quite realizing it.

Though at times it adopts melodrama to heighten the proceedings and moves into controversial territory about how religious texts can be misinterpreted, yet, the focus of film’s screenplay, written by Reshu Nath, remains solely on being a saga of courage, human dignity, and the deliberately maintained debate between religion and law, especially when it comes to social equality.

But what makes this one particularly worth a watch is how it restrains itself from joining the stream of the films which have been releasing in the last decade or so and has been demonizing an entire minority community to rake up box office numbers. Instead, director Varma remains steadfast throughout in his intent, lacing his story-telling with the deserving necessary empathy.

Beginning in 1967, the story follows Shazia Bano (Yami Gautam Dhar), a maulvi’s daughter, who enters into a loving marriage to rising advocate Abbas Khan (Emraan Hashmi), and bears him three children. Though growing responsibilities and time brings the expected distance between them, Shazia is left shocked when Abbas returns home from a three-month long supposed handling of land dispute case in Pakistan, remarried.

While he makes a case that he has solemnized with Saira (Vartika Singh) out of humanitarian grounds for a young widow, but not out of love, Shazia is left distraught, particularly more when she out that everything was just a fabrication. Though she tries to adjust to the new situation, Abbas’s constant preference of work and Saira further angers her.

Due to which she takes the inevitable decision to move back to her parent’s home with her three children, while Abbas agrees to send Rs. 400 a month for their upbringing. That is until, one day he stops paying the sum.

And when Shazia protests, Abbas pays her a lump sum and announces triple talaq, an instantaneous and irrevocable form of divorce in Islamic law to her. Claiming that he is not eligible to pay her anything anymore. In vain, Shazia and her supportive father (Danish Husain) seek help from the local qazi & the Waqf board, but they castigate them instead. Left with no alternative but to fight legally, Shazia, backed by lawyers Bela Jain (Sheeba Chaddha) and Faraz Sayeed (Aseem Hattangady), moves to court. And what begins as a personal struggle soon ignites into a national conversation on women’s rights, justice, faith, and societal power structures.

Here, Suparn Varma’s direction is confident, mature, and strikingly self-assured. His film is an elegantly dressed-up beat down of intransigent leaders who force even religious-minded individuals like Shazia to practically secede from the community. There are those who might’ve hoped that a film about an oppressed Muslim woman and Islamic law would be the kind of propaganda that graces our screens every few months now.

The film, written by Reshu Nath, isn’t that at all as it offers an unconditionally supportive Muslim cleric in the person of Shazia’s father to counter all the patriarchal ones opposing her claim. Even Abbas isn’t shown to be an oppressive sort, just someone who uses existing rules to justify a self-serving decision. The only outright caricature is Abbas’s boorish, wife-beating neighbor. The film doesn’t try to make a point or tell people how they should feel about what’s happening in the film’s story, it is just a reminder and a stark reflection of how patriarchy isn’t the way to go, and no faith or religion tells you to be blinded by it.

Shazia may not be well-educated, but what she has is the will and courage to fight for what is right, even if it means standing up against an entire society that views her as someone who is trying to do them wrong. The only fault I could find with the film is how it steers clear from exploring the larger implications of Shah Bano’s case: the outside world and its conflicts is kept strictly out of the frame, with eyes only on Shazia and her fight. But then that would have been a different film.

Performance wise, Yami Gautam continues to prove why she is one of the finer actors in the industry, and while she’s been picking unique projects for the longest time now, this was easily one of her career best, and rightly so. Her resilience, vulnerability, and emotional exhaustion feel painfully real. Additionally, her recital of Quranic verses are extraordinary.

Emraan Hashmi too brings one his finest gray-black zone turns. Delivering a performance full of restraint, internal chaos, and lived-in authenticity. Newcomer Vartika Singh manages to leave a solid impression in her supporting role. In other roles, Sheeba Chaddha, Aseem Hattangady and Danish Husain elevate every scene they inhabit. On the whole, ‘Haq‘ is a riveting courtroom drama that blends fearless storytelling with exceptional performances.