The film stars Madeleine Stowe as a young author of children's books and Alan Rickman as a sadistic secret policeman who is interrogating her.

Set in an unspecified country, a woman is taken from her home in the middle of the night, accused of embedding dissident messages into her book Closet Land.

The seemingly simple content is questioned by the government, which accuses the author of encouraging and introducing disloyalty among its audience of naïve children.

It is revealed that the novel was actually created as a form of escapism, providing a coping mechanism for the author, who endured sexual abuse as a child.

At Sundance, I met director Alan Rudolph, who encouraged me enormously, pushing me to not compromise or give up in my fight to make my film on my own terms.

Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment gave me what I wanted: myself as director, with full creative control.

[3][5] Bharadwaj later said of their support: I was, and remain opposed, to the Amnesty International quotes and commercials that tag my film in both its theatrical and video release.

But the Amnesty International quotes and commercials made it easy for those who did not understand my film to dismiss it as mere human rights propaganda.

Singling out Rickman's performance, they said of his character: "[He] is no ordinary brute but a complex, highly civilized man who displays a range of emotions and talents, including the ability to voice-act other people to confuse his blindfolded victim."

"[8] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film one and a half stars out of four, saying: "All it requires to make Closet Land complete is a pious screen note at the end of this story, assuring us that the torture of political prisoners continues all over our world today.

She said of the directing and writing: "Miss Bharadwaj, whose film also calls to mind avant-garde department store windows and Calvin Klein's television ads, sets forth her story with no acknowledgement that it is so excruciating, obvious or small.

She pointed out that while the writing is poor, the acting talent outshines it, praising the performances: "The two actors in this claustrophobic debacle are somewhat better than their material."

"[11] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly was unimpressed with the film, saying: The minutes crawl by during this fancifully abstract two-character piece ...

The movie, which has the feel of some didactic Off Off Broadway production left over from 1972, is set entirely in one gray marble room — a kind of stylized Bauhaus torture chamber.

He said: "It is impossible to imagine how Radha Bharadwaj's Closet Land is going to do much good for the cause of human rights in general, and the oppression of women in particular.

Surely, anyone with the slightest degree of awareness of what's going on in the world knows of the horrible plight of political prisoners subjected to unspeakable torture.

He criticised the lack of a proper setting for the film, an unnamed police state, saying: "Right off, the filmmaker lets us off the hook, making it easy to reject the incessant cruelty we witness as artificial."

"[13] Radha Bharadwaj responded to some of the criticism in her own review, particularly to Kevin Thomas, titled "The Real Message of 'Closet Land,'" explaining that it "doesn't attempt to literally depict the physical reality of political interrogation.

He makes the preposterous assertion that there's no need for anyone to see Closet Land because anyone who's aware of world events knows that political prisoners are subject to torture.

Entertainment Weekly's box [office] score of critical grades for Bharadwaj's smart, passionate directorial debut averaged out at a D, lower even than that earned by the brain-dead thriller Sleeping with the Enemy" and that "though presented by Ron Howard's Imagine company and distributed by Universal - [the film] swiftly sank into last-week's-movie limbo.

Her opinion of the film was overall overwhelmingly positive, dubbing it a "complex metaphor to political specificity," an "Alice in Closetland" that "had to be pulled out of its author's head into the Real World for validation."

Such erasure - of self and sexuality - is the legacy of child molestation; but it also suggests the powerfully seductive buildups and letdowns that dominate contemporary media images of women."

Rickman receives her as the 'officer-in-charge', but he wears many masks - Grand Inquisitor, fellow victim, father, lover, therapist, the rapist - before he baptizes Stowe into authentic selfhood."

She further praised the production design by Ishioka and elaborated on the final scene, saying: "After Stowe's last blindfold is removed, she incandesces in her own enlightenment.

"[15] Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat commented on the film's themes, noting: "Radha Bharadwaj not only plumbs the totalitarian mind but also the roles of abuser and victim — powerful male and oppressed woman.

"[16] TV Guide was more positive and gave the film three out of four stars, saying: Despite Alan Rickman's bravura performance, Closet Land...is an overly theatrical analysis of police state repression ...

Despite a splendid performance by Rickman, who can be intellectually cool, diffident or cruel, [the film] suffers from far too much artistic atmosphere ...

[17]Bob Mielke, Ph.D, Professor of English at Truman State University, wrote positively of the film in 2014 in an online analytical essay, calling it "a subgenre of the German Kammerspiel or 'chamber-drama' film," saying: And one of the most powerful visual sleights of hand in Closet Land itself is when, to torturer Alan Rickman's voice-over, we see shots of "innocent" children reconfigured with the uncropped image to show a child greeting Hitler, one at a Ku Klux Klan rally and a young gun-toting terrorist.

[4]Bharadwaj stated in 2005 on her website: It has provided me quiet satisfaction that my small film, which, at the time of its release, was so misunderstood by even some well-meaning critics and people who pride themselves on being connoisseurs of the medium, has endured steadily—purely by word-of-mouth.

The film experience is, however, vastly different: hugely emotional and personal, with her pain and his madness intimately felt; a dream world where imagination is king.