art & films

Award Winning Indo Canadian Film Director bemoans the fate of Women  in her Community
Gurpreet Singh writes from Vancouver

THE director of Getting Married, a film that bagged the Best Canadian Short Film award is sad about women abuse in the Indo Canadian community. The award was announced at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival. In Getting Married, Rani Sandhu, an India born Canadian film director has portrayed the profile of a girl, who is being compelled by her parents to marry as soon as she becomes an adult.

She admits that when she was writing the script, she had the horrific incidents of violence against women by their parents in the back of her mind. She says that those incidents saddened her and feels that her film will open space for dialogue between the parents and the children.    

Reacting to the murder of a Maple Ridge beautician, who had married an auto rickshaw driver in India and the recent murder of another Indo Canadian girl by her father, who was outraged over her relationship with a Caucasian boy, she says, ``I had thought about such incidents. But one can always send across a message more gently without portraying the exact situation’’.   

According to Rani, the story of the film is similar to that of the women who are caught between two different cultures. The main character of the film, Amrit (Rekha Sharma) is dating with a Caucasian boy, while her mother is looking for a suitable match for her daughter. She has to decide between her boyfriend and men from her own community. Rani says that she knows a lot of women who are dating with somebody outside their culture. ``When people ask me if it is autobiographical I say yes to some extent because I know women who are exactly doing that’’.  

Rani is open to her community’s reaction and wish that the Indo Canadians could watch her film. ``It does not bother me if people feel differently. I have to be myself. For me more important is that my work opens a space for reaction and dialogue.’’  The film will now be shown on City TV. But Rani wants to take her film to the Indo Canadian community and is looking into various means to do that.   

Rani says that her film is primarily focused on the cross generational gap. ``I feel that the communication between the parents and the children is not taking place. I have tried to open another space to fill this gap’’. Her film was selected by cine city and is funded by the City TV.  

Rani was only two-years-old when her parents migrated to Canada in 1976. She was born in Jalandhar district of Punjab, India. She has worked in the policy department of the Ministry of Women Equality in the past. She had been to Zimbabwe, where she worked for a non-profit body of indigenous filmmaking. She worked as Production assistant for Raj Purewal’s Loves me not. She did a diploma in digital film making from Art Institute (previously called CDIS) before her debut into the art and craft of film making.