Coming to WORLD Channel’s Global Voices series this Sunday, July 14: INVOKING JUSTICE
Deepa Dhanraj’s look at Muslim South Indian women uniting to ensure justice under Sharia law made its debut at IDFA in 2011. Its festival run has included Hawaii, DocPoint, One World, CAAMFest, and NY’s Asian American fest, among others.
In Southern India’s Tamil Nadu, disputes involving family issues – dowries to divorces, domestic violence to murder – used to be adjudicated by local Jamaats, all-male assemblies tasked with applying Sharia law, without women present to offer testimony or defense. In 2004, this practice changed, when a Women’s Jamaat was formed to attend directly to women’s issues, a radical and controversial idea that nevertheless proved popular as women became emboldened by its equal application of the law. Dhanraj’s film focuses on the work of a Women’s Jamaat as its fierce advocates seek justice for a mother whose daughter was allegedly set aflame by her husband and in-laws in a dowry dispute, and for a battered wife who’s finally reached her limit when her husband makes inappropriate sexual advances to their daughter. Eye-opening in its raw exposé of continuing gender inequities and corruption, the film nevertheless leaves the viewer feeling that these women are making a real difference, working from within the bounds of the system to reclaim their religion from extremists who would use it to subjugate and do violence upon women.
what (not) to doc 