By Mabel Pais

TO KILL A TIGER

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE nominee for the 2024 OSCARS

REOPENS: March 8 at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), more Cities to follow

“How a father’s love for his daughter challenged India’s ‘rape culture’” –

The Guardian – Saeed Kamali Dehghan

“A powerful portrait of a family’s strength. A masterfully observant film, in which one family’s fight for justice becomes a larger parable about a pressing human rights issue.” – Pat Mullen, POV Magazine

Dir/Co-Prod/Writ: Nisha Pahuja; Co-Prods: Cornelia Principe & David Oppenheim; 2022; Documentary; Hindi with Eng/subs; 2h 5m

Exec.Prod: Mindy Kaling, Dev Patel, Rupi Kaur alongside AC Films Inc’s Andy Cohen, NFB’s Anita Lee, Atul Gawande, Andrew Dragoumis, Anita Bhatia, ShivHans Pictures’ Shivani Rawat, Deepa Mehta, Minor Realm’s Samarth Sahni & Priya Doraswamy.

In a small village in Jharkhand, India, 2017, a farmer becomes embroiled in conflict when he and his wife report to the police a horrific crime — after a family wedding, three village men dragged their 13-year-old daughter into the woods and raped her. According to government data, a woman is raped every 16 minutes in India, and conviction rates are less than 30 percent. Village leaders launch a campaign not for justice, but for the father to drop charges and marry his daughter off to one of her arrested rapists—an “honorable” solution to preserve the community’s dignity. Watch the trailer – youtu.be/Tgu2k1e8sUs

With intimate access to both father and daughter through the years long ordeal (emotional, legal, financial), along with candid interviews with neighbors, the village ward, and NGO activists, Pahuja reveals a riveting story of one family’s inspiring, courageous battle, and the survival instincts of a society entrenched in toxic patriarchy.

“The story is heart-wrenching but triumphant, and stays with you long after you’ve seen it. TO KILL A TIGER shows you not only the power of a father’s love but the strength of a young woman who faced the unimaginable, and chose to fight,” Mindy Kaling said in a statement.

Dev Patel called TO KILL A TIGER a “David and Goliath story to the highest extent,” as well as “one of the most important in modern Indian history. In a culture where submission is commonplace, to challenge a centuries old system that has silenced the voices of victims is revolutionary. Despite threats against the family and being ostracized in their community, they remained unflinching in their resolve.”

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INDIAN FILMMAKER’S 1988 WORK RESTORED

By Mabel Pais

ONE HAND DON’T CLAP

“Kavery Dutta Kaul’s vivid and engaging documentary moves and shakes with inimitable music.” – Luis Francia, The Village Voice

“Seductively rhythmic and poetic…not just a documentary about music and musicians, but an examination of cultures co-existing as if in parallel universes.” – John Anderson, New York Newsday

Opens March 8 in New York City, April 8 in several theaters in Los Angeles

Dir: Kavery Dutta Kaul; USA; English; Color; 1h 32m

ONE HAND DON’T CLAP captures the vibrant story of calypso and the emergence of soca, through the eyes of two legendary artists, Lord Kitchener, the Grandmaster of the music and Calypso Rose, the first woman to break through in a traditionally male arena.

Forging onscreen the connections between American communities and where families come from, the documentary leads audiences from New York recording studies to the awesome magic of Carnival in Trinidad & Tobago. The film features artists across the 20th century whose songs reflect regional and global themes that continue to resonate. The many generations in ONE HAND DON’T CLAP trace the evolution of a musical style whose infectious rhythms and exhilarating irreverence have found their way to ever-broadening audiences worldwide.

ONE HAND DON’T CLAP is an important and unique piece of work that does just that. Its vivid colors and imagery bring creative expression of this appealing but perhaps unfamiliar music to a global audience. Kavery’s film plays a pioneering role in the recognition bestowed upon this art form in more recent times. The energy of calypso music combined with the film’s character-driven, informative and entertaining story telling style reaches across borders.

Capturing the audacity and authenticity of its subjects, ONE HAND DON’T CLAP represents momentous perspectives on the music and politics of Caribbean nations and the West Indian-American community. This powerful musical force from the Caribbean combines witty English lyrics with an explosive beat that has burst out in Buster Poindexter’s ‘Hot, Hot, Hot’ and Lionel Richie’s ‘All Night Long’. ONE HAND DON’T CLAP also reflects the legacy of a vast West Indian-American population, the surprising entrepreneurial growth of their music industry in the US and the iron going ties to the traditions that flourish in the islands they come from. It lends voice to what it means to be American. Awarding the film four stars as “seductively rhythmic and poetic”, John Anderson wrote in New York Newsday, “You might ask yourself halfway through the film why calypso music hasn’t become a bigger part of the American musical culture. When it’s over, you might ask yourself how your concept of the American musical culture could have been so narrow?

DIRECTOR KAVERY KAUL

Director/producer Kavery Kaul makes documentaries that take audiences to places they may not know, to meet people who introduce them to a new experience, a fresh world view.

“Carnival season — that period from the New Year till Ash Wednesday — makes Trinidad one of the greatest film sets in the world. It also poses immense logistical difficulties from a production standpoint”, Kavery recalls. “The challenge was to keep all that out of the film and put the focus on Kitchener, Rose, the other performers, and the story of their music.” 

(Mabel Pais writes on Social Issues, The Arts and Entertainment, Spirituality, Education, Cuisine, Health & Wellness, and Business)