When To Kill a Tiger won the Best Canadian Feature Film award at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, you might have thought 2022 was a weak year for Canadian film. Actually, the Canadian film lineup at that festival was rather outstanding.
Riceboy Sleeps; Brother; I Like Movies; Falcon Lake; North of Normal; So Much Tenderness; Stellar; The Origin of Evil; The Swearing Jar; Rosie; Viking, and Queens of the Qing Dynasty.
To Kill a Tiger is supposed to be better than all of those films??
To Kill a Tiger is a documentary about Kiran (not her real name), who is 13. She attends a wedding in April 2017. Later that night, three village men attack her and sexually assault the girl. Her cousin is among the 3 accused men. The film is also about Kiran's father Ranjit, a rice farmer in a village in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, who goes against the norm and fights for justice for his daughter.
The film focuses on Ranjit because fathers in those circumstances don't fight for their daughters. The surprise is that we see Kiran and watch how she lives her life following the assault. Ultimately, Kiran decides to allow the filmmakers to keep her image on screen.
We also see the incompetence of the local police, threats against the family, various women from the village, including one who said “They already had sex, might as well get them married.”
Nisha Pahuja uses this story to speak about the overall “rape culture” in India, where over 90% of rape cases go unreported. The mentality of the village wanting to sweep such matters under a proverbial rug. We even see the documentary crew under threat.
Ranjit is a rice farmer yet he is expected to gather up witnesses and get them to the courthouse to give their testimony. A lot to ask of anyone. We even see him coaching Kiran on giving testimony, such as making sure she is loud enough for people to hear her.
We do hear a bit from Jaganti, wife of Ranjit and mother of Kiran. The direct interviews otherwise are with men, including members of an NGO who worked on gender issues such as sexual assault.
To Kill a Tiger gets Oscar nod (The Current with Matt Galloway)
This is Pahuja's first film in a decade; we saw The World Before Her (2012) at the Windsor International Film Festival. You can tell Pahuja and the rest of the crew put a lot into making this film.
The film is difficult to watch in terms of subject matter and little context around what is happening. You have to just go with the flow.
The film is important, significant, and hopefully life changing. Best Canadian film of 2022? No.
Ryan Gosling, Celine Song, To Kill a Tiger get Oscar nominations
Rojek misses the Oscars shortlist cut for Best International Feature Film
Mindy Kaling and Dev Patel were added as executive producers to give more heft and credibility to the film. This makes the film's awkward distribution pattern all the more puzzling.
A film should not be judged on its distribution setup. Though this film has had a highly odd distribution much more than any other film we can recall. The film's American distribution has been scattered in mostly major cities, sometimes for less than a week. We ran into one situation where the film was supposed to be playing in a theatre but we couldn't find out if that was true.
The film only had a single, late-morning Sunday screening on its most recent trip to Chicago.
The film theoretically was available to Canadians on the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) Web site when we were in Canada in November but the film wasn't accessible. That situation changed in December and now Canadians can watch the film through the National Film Board.
If the film wins an Oscar on March 10, perhaps the U.S. distribution setup will improve.
A film that is considered to be so important doesn't feel that way when distributed poorly and inconsistently.
CanadianCrossing.com film reviews
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
To Kill a Tiger won the Best Canadian Feature Film award at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. The film won Best Feature Length Documentary at the 2023 Canadian Screen Awards 2023. To Kill a Tiger is up for an Oscar next month for Best Documentary Feature Film.
Canadians can (now) watch To Kill a Tiger on the NFB Web site. The film has had limited theatrical release in the United States.
video credit: NFB
photo credit: To Kill a Tiger
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.