I Want to Live

That Rajendra Gour never directed a fiction feature doesn’t mean he wasn’t connected to the industry. Quite the opposite, as evidenced by one of his shorts that was partly shot on the sound stage of fellow Indian expat, K.M. Basker, an important figure in classical Malay cinema and as mainstream as it gets.

With I Want to Live, Gour ventured into scriptwriting for actor-auteur M(uhammad) Amin, resulting in a key work for both their respective oeuvres. For Gour, it’s probably the first film in which he focuses on women: the place society conventionally accords to them as well as their attempts to break the mould. He tells the story of Rahiman who finds herself between two men: the evil stepfather who turned her into a prostitute, and a kind policeman who falls in love with her – defying the social stigma of Rahiman’s work.

I Want to Live was considered a progressive work that presented prostitution in various shades of grey instead of stark, moralising black-and-white contrast. Rahiman’s fight for her dignity can also be seen as a fight for a different society – one in which women are not second-class citizens.

– Olaf Möller