To Kill a Tiger | Nisha Pahuja - Oscar-nominated documentary

[BluBonnet]

‘To Kill a Tiger’ Review: A Heavy, Resilient Documentary About Justice in Modern India

The rare documentary that opens not just with a content warning, but with a request not to share identifying images of its child subject, To Kill a Tiger is a heavy but necessary work about the legalese and cultural attitudes surrounding sexual violence in rural India. The Oscar-shortlisted doc from New Delhi-born director Nisha Pahuja is a powerful and risky example of the vitality of modern nonfiction filmed in South Asia. It joins recent films like “All That Breathes,” “Against the Tide,” “While We Watched” and “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” which fill the narrative gaps too often left by mainstream Indian fiction, while adopting — and in many ways, re-invigorating — the visual language of traditional drama.

Much of the film follows Ranjit, the father of a 13-year-old survivor of sexual assault, as he searches for justice for his daughter in their village in the eastern state of Jharkhand. However, the approach taken by Pahuja and cinematographer Mrinal Desai is less in the traditional “talking head” vein and more akin to an intimate drama. Its gentle, piercing closeups make us familiar with Ranjit’s soulful eyes, as well as his receding and graying hairline over the several years the movie unfolds, as he battles economic hardship and social ostracization.