Coming to theatres today, Friday, October 23: INDIA’S DAUGHTER
Leslee Udwin’s account of the national response to an infamous crime made its debut on the BBC earlier this year. In addition to broadcast in other European nations, the doc has screened at Sheffield, Biografilm, AFI Docs, Tallgrass, and will appear at next month’s Denver film fest.
The gang rape of Jyoti Singh on a bus in India in December 2012 was particularly notable not for its reprehensible brutality, but in its unexpected role in catalyzing a movement against sexual violence in the nation. Where women previously were expected to remain silent and bare the blame for rape and other abuses, in the direct aftermath of the discovery of Singh’s mutilated body, Indian women and their allies rose up to demand justice. Udwin’s film, which has generated no shortage of controversy on the subcontinent, lays out the simple particulars of the crime and offers a sense of the victim via emotional interviews with her parents and a close friend, but largely focuses on the paradigmatic shift that her tragedy engendered. Most eye-opening here is an extended interview with one of the perpetrators, Mukesh Singh, who claims he just drove the bus. Expressing not a shred of remorse and instead actively blaming the victim, he, like the defense attorneys commenting here, represent the outdated, and clearly dangerous, view of gender disparity that lay at the heart of sexual violence. While the filmmaking here is, for the most part, fairly conventional, in capturing these sentiments with such disturbing frankness, Udwin creates a striking, cautionary call to action.
what (not) to doc 