In its first 10 seconds, the trailer of Assi tells you a chilling statistic -- that there are 80 reported rape cases in India every day. “That’s one every 20 minutes. By the time you finish this interview, one more would have happened,” director Anubhav Sinha told us, when we met him to discuss his upcoming film that sees Taapsee Pannu as a lawyer, who takes up the case of a sexual assault survivor, essayed by Kani Kusruti. 

The statistics disturb him, but what unsettles him more is the normalisation. “This story has crossed my eyes so many times through my life that it became ‘normal’. I was not okay with that.” He is careful to clarify that Assi is not based on one headline. “It’s not a specific story I picked up from a newspaper. I think it’s made up of all the stories I’ve ever read. I would see the headline and not even feel anything. That scared me.”