The road to an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature had its share of detours for writer-director Nisha Pahuja as she grappled with what eventually became To Kill a Tiger. For one, the film wound up with a decidedly different focus than what she initially envisioned. Also there was concern over whether or not to show the face of a protagonist who was a minor at the time. The initial decision was to obscure her identity throughout. But that plan ultimately changed, with the young woman bringing another measure of heroism to what was already a family profile in courage.
To Kill a Tiger introduces us to Ranjit, a farmer in Jharkhand, India, who takes on the fight of his and his family’s life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, a survivor of a brutal sexual assault at the hands of three men. In India, where a rape is reported every 20 minutes and conviction rates are less than 30 percent, Ranjit’s decision to support his daughter, Kiran (a pseudonym designed to protect her identity for the film), was virtually unprecedented, meeting resistance in his village and resulting in death threats to his family.
Pahuja explained the genesis of the film, sharing that after the 2012 Delhi gang rape–a horrific event tackled by her acclaimed short film Indian Bus Outrage–she wanted to make a feature-length documentary “about masculinity and understand the ideas around patriarchy and how it can be a prison for both men and women. I started filming with a non-profit that was running a three-and-a-half-year gender sensitization program with boys and men in 30 villages across the state of Jharkhand.
“Initially, I thought the film would be about a few remarkable men who were enrolled in this program and track their transformation. Ranjit was one of the people I met in this program and I learned about what happened to his daughter. It took us three-and-a-half years to film the project and what Ranjit was doing for his daughter was practically unheard of. Against the wishes of the villagers who told the family that they should marry their daughter to one of the rapists, Ranjit and his wife took a stance to support their daughter. It is their courage that drew me towards their story and I was inspired by Kiran’s strength at such a young age.”
Still, Pahuja invested a great deal emotionally in the original premise for the film. “The plan was to weave the different storylines of men and boys who were enrolled in a gender sensitization program and to track the impact [social activist] Mahendra ji [Kumar] was having on these men by changing the ideas around patriarchy,” shared Pahuja. (Kumar still has a small yet key role in To Kill a Tiger.) “Eventually,” continued Pahuja, “we shared a five-hour assembly with two filmmakers we really trust and they both felt that there was material for more than one film and that Ranjit and Kiran’s story was strong enough to have its own space. Letting go of the initial approach was a gradual and painful process but also liberating and I am so glad that we took the risk and pivoted.”
Another pivot centered on Kiran–in terms of showing her face to the audience. “Initially, we were filming her in kind of abstract ways but then it did not feel right,” related Pahuja. “It felt as if I was perpetuating the same thought that others in the village had about her, as if she was the one to be blamed and had something to hide. So we decided to mask her identity in post. When we were editing, we tried a lot of different techniques but they all felt as if we were stripping her of her humanity and it all felt strange. One of the positive things that came out of us taking so long on this film is that Kiran became an adult. When we showed the final cut of the film to the family, Kiran decided to come forward and reveal herself. She was really proud of the 13-year-old girl who had tremendous strength to fight for justice. What is so striking about Kiran is that she never refused to back down despite all the pressures and intimidation that they had to endure from the villagers.”
In addition to the Oscar nod, To Kill a Tiger has won assorted awards, including the Amplify Voice Award for Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto International Films Festival, the Directors Guild of Canada honor for Excellence in Documentary, and the Palm Spring International Film Festival’s Best Documentary Award.
To Kill a Tiger grew out of Pahuja’s long career of addressing various human rights issues, notably violence against women in India. In 2015, the Toronto-based filmmaker won the Amnesty International media award for Canadian journalism on the strength of the aforementioned Indian Bus Outrage produced for Global News. Pahuja’s other credits include the multi-award-winning The World Before Her (2012 Best Documentary Feature, Jury Award Winner, Tribeca Film Festival; Best Canadian Documentary, Hot Docs; TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten; Best Documentary nominee, Canadian Screen Awards), and the series Diamond Road (2008 Gemini Award for Best Documentary Series), and Bollywood Bound (2002 Gemini Award nominee).
To Kill a Tiger will be launched globally by Netflix, which recently acquired the film. Among the executive producers on the documentary are Dev Patel, Mindy Kaling, Rupi Kaur, Anita Lee, Shivani Rawat, Andy Cohen, Atul Gawande, Andrew Dragoumis, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Other key contributors included editors Mike Munn and Dave Kazala, sound recordist Anita Kushwaha, and Pahuja’s husband and DP, Mrinal Desai.
