“What If I Tell You” is a personal documentary film wherein, after Breast Cancer treatment, the filmmaker is affected, but she is asked to be silent due to the fear of being gossiped about.
As a breast cancer survivor, she wants to know what are the social consequences of surviving breast cancer. Why do her parents and other people around her never utter the words? She starts filming the men for choosing a prospective life partner. She wants to know what men think of her when they know she is a survivor. Does that affect them choosing her as a partner? The personal becomes the political in all ways. What emerges are themes of gender inequality and patriarchy in so many different ways. Her parents live in a conservative town yet are very honest and strong. She finds it difficult to open up as this subject is never discussed in her family. The men represent contemporary thinking and pop culture and carry an impression of the families, Media, and Society that shapes them. The filmmaker and the man and her family have candid conversations that lead to realizations of gender roles and inequality. Teenaa speaks to her best friend, Nomi, to share her feelings.
The film emerges to be a balance between the intense experiences of a survivor and her parents, finding the reason for breast cancer from an emotional perspective, and the tete-a-tete with prospective men from different towns in India. In between, she is realizing herself, looking inwards and outwards to come to terms with herself and how she finds herself after searching everywhere and exploring everything else.