Slow Travel, Fast Threats:: Gendered Violence and Feminist Ethics in Apurva

Abstract

This article analyzes Apurva (2023), a survival-thriller that foregrounds gendered violence shaping women’s mobility through its portrayal of a young woman abducted while travelling alone by bus in rural India. Located within slow travel discourse and feminist spatial politics, the study interrogates the presumption that slowness and mobility are universally ethical or empowering. Drawing on feminist geography and intersectional theory, notably the works of Doreen Massey, Sara Ahmed, and Kimberlé Crenshaw, the analysis traces how gender, isolation, and mobility intersect to yield vulnerability. Through close textual analysis, the paper shows how Apurva discloses the spatial injustices constraining women’s freedom of movement, demonstrating how agency is systematically dismantled by fear, violence, and norms of passivity. By repositioning slowness as a possible site of vulnerability rather than an introspective opportunity, the film resists the romancing of travel stories; it instead highlights the need for a feminist ethics of travel rooted in safety, care, and spatial justice. The article treats the film as a cultural-philosophical case study rather than as empirical evidence about women’s mobility, and argues that the ethical value of slowness is conditional upon agency, consent, safety, care, and spatial justice. It distinguishes voluntary slowness from coerced duration and brings feminist care ethics into the argument from the outset.