Ban of film 'India's Daughter' fuels anger worldwide

When word of a Delhi court's ban on the film "India's Daughter" reached Leslee Udwin, the filmmaker was faced with a dilemma. Udwin was working on some final edits, and she was forced to decide between continuing that work and risking interrogation and arrest.

"I called seven lawyers, and every one of them said I should flee India," Udwin said. "Six of them said I should get on the next plane, and a seventh said I should get in a car right then and drive across the border to Nepal. I was going to leave, and then I thought, 'the whole point of the movie is making your voice heard against evil forces.' So I didn't go anywhere."

This week, Udwin began raising her rallying cry on these shores. She was able to leave India unharmed several days after the ban, and was speaking backstage shortly before her film was to make its U.S. premiere at a starry but serious-minded event in downtown Manhattan, ahead of an airing on PBS later this year.

In the space of a few days, Udwin's film has become a touchstone for women's equality worldwide, even as it can't legally be shown in its home country.

"India's Daughter" documents the brutal assault on Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old Delhi medical student who, boarding a bus to return home after seeing a movie with a male friend in 2012, was gang-raped by a group of male passengers. The incident was gruesome; it involved not just repeated rapes but an onslaught that at one point had the attackers pulling out Singh's intestines. She died several days after the assault.

Four men were convicted in the attack and sentenced to death, and the massive protests against the rape that followed became a referendum for women's rights both on the subcontinent and around the world.

Produced by the BBC, the film features harrowing interviews with Jyoti's parents, including her mother describing her poignant last moments with her daughter at the hospital, as well as her father's controlled anger at his daughter's killers.

But the film provokes its greatest outrage upon showing those killers and their supporters, some of whom Udwin interviewed on camera — and whose words present a portrait of an India rife with gender equality and poisonous attitudes toward women.

Defense lawyers point the finger at Jyoti Singh for being out at night; one describes women "like a diamond" and says that "if you leave a diamond out, a dog will take it." One of the convicted killers, Mukesh Singh, is shown at length in the film talking about the attack and offering justifications for it; he said Jyoti Singh would have been spared if only she "didn't fight back."

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government — particularly home minister Rajnath Singh — has criticized the film for portraying the status of Indian women inaccurately, while he and other officials expressed concern the film can cause violence, citing the earlier protests that led to clashes with law enforcement.

Delhi police, which sought the restraining order on the film, released a statement that said the movie "created a situation of tension and fear amongst women in our society."

But the bid to suppress quickly had the opposite effect, shooting the movie to the top of Twitter's trending topics late last week and prompting it to go viral online, while also leading to unofficial screenings in villages around India. The film's Indian broadcaster, NDTV, decided to show a black screen during the entirety of time slot in which the film was scheduled to premiere.