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There are films that raise questions gently and ever-so-subtly. Stolen is not one of them.
Karan Tejpal’s debut feature begins with a woman’s loss and ends with a society’s silence. At its core, this is not a thriller about a missing child. It is a quiet, devastating study of power—who holds it, who is crushed under it, and who looks away when it happens.
The film follows two urban brothers, Gautam and Raman, who witness the kidnapping of a baby from a rural railway station. As they attempt to help the child’s mother, Jhumpa, the narrative slips into territory far more complex than a simple chase. The more they engage, the more they are misunderstood. The closer they move toward justice, the more suspicion follows them. But the real story, the one just outside the frame, belongs to the mother.
Jhumpa Mahato is played by Mia Maelzer with staggering restraint. Her grief is the engine of the plot, but her voice is not the loudest one in the room. This, too, is deliberate. In interviews, Tejpal has spoken openly about how Maelzer helped shape the role into something far more specific than it was on the page. Originally written as a generic “marginalized woman,” the character was transformed by Maelzer’s deep engagement with dialect, body language, and inner life. That performance earned her the Best Actress award at the 2024 Beijing International Film Festival.
Despite being central to the story, Jhumpa’s presence is not centered in the way viewers may expect. And perhaps that is the point. Her erasure from the narrative mirrors the very systems the film critiques—the ones that routinely overlook the pain of women who look, speak, and live like her. Jhumpa is tribal, impoverished, and disenfranchised. In India, that combination often means your tragedy is noticed only when it inconveniences someone more powerful.
Tejpal has been clear that the film was inspired by the real-life lynching of two young men in Assam in 2018. The men, educated and privileged, were beaten to death by a mob after false rumors spread that they were child abductors. This horrific event and many others like it formed the emotional and thematic basis of Stolen. In his interviews, Tejpal calls it a film about the “two Indias”—one that moves with freedom, and one that moves only when allowed to.
This divide is not discussed through dialogue. It is not named. But it is present in the architecture of the story. The brothers, played by Abhishek Banerjee and Shubham Vardhan, occupy a space of moral ambiguity. Their instinct to help is genuine, but so is their fear. Their fear of being misread, of being falsely implicated, of crossing an invisible line between privilege and proximity. Banerjee, known for roles that oscillate between empathy and menace, turns in a restrained performance here—one that conveys the helplessness of being both witness and suspect.
The film’s tension builds more from what it holds back than what it reveals. Critics at Screen Daily, following Stolen’s Venice premiere, noted how the film highlights India’s “crass class antagonisms” without ever sliding into sensationalism. At the Zurich Film Festival, it earned a Special Mention for portraying these themes with clarity and nuance.. At Skip City in Japan, Tejpal was awarded Best Director, and the film won the Audience Award, suggesting its impact reached beyond cultural boundaries.
While Stolen has often been praised as a lean, effective thriller, its emotional force comes from its refusal to offer resolution. The systems that failed Jhumpa are not repaired. The men who tried to help are not celebrated. The film instead asks a harder question: how many times has this already happened? How often do stories like Jhumpa’s go unnoticed because they are told by women without access, language, or protection?
Even the sound design reflects this ethos. Tejpal deliberately avoided background music in key moments, a decision he described as crucial in helping the audience “sit with the discomfort.” There are no emotional cues, no cinematic signals to tell you what to feel. You are left with silence. And silence, in Stolen, is never empty. It is an indictment.
Real-world relevance only sharpens this discomfort. India’s history with caste and tribal erasure is not subtext here, it is structure. Jhumpa’s identity as an Adivasi woman, though never explicitly stated, informs every aspect of how she is treated by the world around her. This is not a narrative choice. It is a reflection of reality. Cases of missing children from marginalized communities often receive little attention unless someone from a higher social group is affected. In Stolen, this truth is not spoken. It is simply lived.
Mia Maelzer’s portrayal ensures that Jhumpa is not reduced to a symbol. She is neither saint nor victim, but a woman in pain, moving forward because she must. Her performance is controlled yet unyielding. Instead of offering her closure, the final act of the film gives her agency. She does not become the heroine of a redemption arc. She becomes what the system refuses to acknowledge—a person whose loss deserves to be witnessed.
What Stolen achieves is rare. It makes visible the violence of being unseen. It shows how even the well-intentioned falter when asked to extend empathy beyond the lines of caste, class, and comfort. And it does all of this without turning its message into a lecture. It trusts the audience to connect the dots, to feel the weight of what goes unspoken.
In the days after watching Stolen, what stays with you is not the mechanics of the plot. It is the memory of a voice that was almost drowned out. And the realization that you, too, might have looked away.
Tejpal has said he wanted the film to feel like a social horror. Not horror in the sense of the genre, but horror in the quiet, everyday ways society fails people like Jhumpa. The film does not try to heal that failure. It simply holds it in the light, long enough for you to recognize it.
That recognition is the film’s most radical act.