To Kill A Tiger Brings Attention to Rape Victims in India
November 8, 2023
Western media, from the Toronto Globe & Mail to People magazine, have carried major, favorable reviews of “To Kill a Tiger.” Almost all the stories mention that a woman is raped in India every 20 minutes – though, as The Washington Post noted, the true figure is likely far higher since a vast majority of rapes in the country are apparently not reported to the police.
The documentary, directed by Nisha Pahuja, deals with the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl – given the pseudonym Kiran - by three men in a village in the state of Jharkhand, India, in 2017.
Village leaders tried to pressure her father, Ranjit, to drop criminal charges and preserve the community’s “dignity” by marrying his daughter to one of the arrested rapists. Many neighbors said that the perpetrators’ “naughty” behavior must have been provoked by Kiran.
The father, with support from the Srijan Foundation, a women’s rights group, bravely pursues the case despite physical threats. As the trial proceeds over fourteen months, Pahuja tracks the emotional, legal, and financial hurdles faced by the daughter and father. She also interviews village leaders, neighbors, lawyers, politicians and social activists.
In the documentary, “we bear witness to scenes so devastating and anger-inducing that even viewers fully aware of what they are getting into may be taken aback,” wrote Peter Sobczynski on the website RogerEbert.com, an influential film review site in the United States. “The first few scenes are as painful as anything I can ever recall seeing in a film.”
Earlier this year, Pahuja added actors Dev Patel and Mindy Kaling as executive producers. They are promoting it on social media and giving interviews, which brought wide media coverage - and wider distribution - of the documentary. Other Indian executive producers include surgeon, author and Biden Administration’s US Aid official for Global Health Atul Gawande; also Shivani Rawat, Rupi Kaur, Deepa Mehta, Samarth Sahni, Anita Bhatia, Priya Doraswamy, and Niraj Bhatia.
Since last month, the documentary has been screened in theaters in the New York area, San Francisco, and other U.S. cities. It is available online to Canadian colleges and universities, through the National Film Board of Canada, which was one of the film’s producers and, till this week, to members of the International Documentary Association.
“To Kill a Tiger” debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. It was also shown at several other film festivals including in Windsor, Canada, and Seattle, Dallas, Salem and Palm Springs in the U.S., winning several awards.
“I make films that deal with social and political issues,” Pahuja states on her LinkedIn profile. She told People that she has two goals with To Kill a Tiger: “to encourage other survivors to come forward and demand justice around the world. And…encourage men to become allies in the fight for gender equality.”
Since 1999, Pahuja has directed four documentaries, including The World Before Her (2012). She is also a freelance writer, researcher, and producer.
Pahuja, 56-years-old, was born in New Delhi and grew up in Toronto. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature from the University of Toronto.
Initially, Pahuja was planning to blur the face of Kiran to protect her identity. But, having reached age 18 and after watching the film, Kiran agreed to her face being shown. “She was so proud of herself…She wanted to to come forward…to share her story,” Pahuja told People.
Critics point out that “To Kill a Tiger” is not a well-crafted documentary. It “is not an especially artful example of the documentary form,” writes Sobczynski. But, he adds, this kind of story does not require “flashy visuals or a complex narrative structure. It tells its story clearly and directly.”
The film is not “stylish or particularly shapely…and it occasionally drags,” writes Mark Jenkins in The Washington Post. “In a way, though, it’s fitting that the movie looks rather ordinary. What happened to Kiran, although horrific, is commonplace. What’s extraordinary…is Kiran and Ranjit’s determination, and the possible changes for good that may result from it.”
In India, where conviction rates for rapes are less than 30 percent, “Ranjit’s decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of,” notes the film’s synopsis.
Pahuja’s documentary is a “David and Goliath story to the highest extent…one of the most important in modern Indian history,” actor Dev Patel told Variety. “In a culture where submission is commonplace, to challenge a centuries old system that has silenced the voices of victims is revolutionary.”
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