Against the advice of his entire village, an Indian farmer denounces the gang rape of which his 13-year-old daughter was the victim and puts himself on the front line for her to obtain justice.
The figures in India are staggering: a rape is reported every 20 minutes, even though it is estimated that 90% of assaults are not reported. Fewer than one in three rape trials end in conviction, say documentary makers To Kill a Tiger (kill a tiger), which follows Ranjit’s fight on behalf of his daughter.
The scene narrated by the teenager is chilling: at a wedding, a boy grabs her and takes her aside, followed by two others. She is only 13 years old. The ages of the attackers are not revealed, but on screen they appear to be between 16 and 20 years old. Ranjit’s daughter is thrown to the ground and raped by each of them before being beaten and then threatened with death if she dares to open her mouth.
When she gets home, she tells everything to her parents. Her father, Ranjit, supports her from day one and takes her to file a complaint. She is the apple of his eye. “A father who fights for his daughter in a rape case is rare”, underlines an activist for gender equality, in the documentary.
To Kill a Tiger follows this exceptional and… terrifying fight. In India, what happens in the village must stay in the village… To clear his daughter’s honor, Ranjit should have agreed to give her in marriage to one of his attackers. He couldn’t do that to her. The pressure is strong on the family to drop the case. Ranjit even receives death threats.
Indo-Canadian documentary filmmaker Nisha Pahuja tells this story with meticulousness and modesty, but without prevarication. She is close to her characters, who confide in her with authenticity. It dissects the judicial system that Ranjit faces, shows the substantive work carried out by support organizations and looks at the mentalities that still prevail in India.
There, a raped girl is not only a dishonored girl, she is a girl who dishonors her family and her whole village. His behavior is of course more criticized than that of the boys. “A girl must not forget that she is a girl,” says the lawyer for the attackers, specifying that India is not the West. “I can’t even trust my son here. »
The tiger to be killed here is much more than the culture of rape, it is a culture of relationships between men and women, as well as a clan spirit deeply rooted in people’s minds. Nisha Pahuja shows the ferocity and all the courage it takes to go all the way.
To Kill a Tiger is presented at the Cinéma du Parc in the original version with French subtitles and in the original version with English subtitles.
Documentary
To Kill a Tiger (VF: kill a tiger)
Nisha Pahuja
2:05 a.m.