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(Release Info UK schedule; Aldeburgh Cinema Trust 51 High Street, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, IP15 5AU, Sunday 14 Nov 2021, 14:30)
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"Writing With Fire"
Armed with smartphones and tenacity, a fearless group of journalists from India's only women-led news outlet confront social injustice while fighting for marginalized voices in the world’s largest democracy. The women of Khabar Lahariya, all from the Dalit caste, prepare to transition the newspaper from print to digital even though many of their reporters don’t have access to electricity at home. Armed with smartphones, Chief Reporter Meera and her team of investigative journalists confront some of India’s biggest issues, exposing the relentless discrimination against women and amplifying the voices of those who suffer from the oppressive caste system.
"Writing With Fire" is set in the heart of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state , also a state known for its notorious levels of corruption, violence against women and the brutal oppression of its minorities. What complicates matters further are that many parts of Uttar Pradesh continue to remain media dark regions. It's against this backdrop that we're introduced to the work of Khabar Lahariya, India’s only digital news agency run by Dalit women, who belong to the lowest. Thirty-two-year-old Meera is investigating a brutal rape case and as the story unfolds, the endemic violence and complexities of being a Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh are brought to the fore. Born into an impoverished Dalit family and married at 14, Meera went against her conservative culture to study and become a journalist. In their fifteenth year of print, we see the paper deciding to increase their reach by shifting to digital news. Meera is entrusted with this move and leads her team of 28 semi-literate, professionally trained reporters, to transform the newspaper into a regional digital news force. As her team experiences its first taste of digital democracy, their video stories on corruption, violence against women, broken roads and inadequate public healthcare begin to become popular, unsettling bigger news agencies that are run by men. In the film, we see this journey, fraught with threats, danger, hopes and sacrifice, through the eyes of our central protagonist Meera and her feisty protégé, Suneeta.
Twenty-year-old Suneeta who grew up working as a child laborer in an illegal mine, possesses a passion and bravado she brings directly to her work, that creates many risky situations for her, we see her working as the only woman crime reporter in the region, investigating the region’s lucrative illegal mining businesses and the corrupt nexus between the mining mafia and politicians. Her news reporting is incisive, bold and impactful. Meera talks about the great potential she sees in Suneeta the next level of leadership, a hope for the organization’s future expansion plans. From a few thousand views on 'YouTube', Meera’s new stories are about to cross 150 million views and have created massive impact on ground. As the organisation evolves, we witness Meera’s challenge in honing an impetuous Suneeta into an able leader. On a macro-level, the last six years have seen India hurtle from a vibrant democracy towards right-wing Hindu authoritarianism. For those who've chosen to keep their independent voice, the consequences are drastic. As the risk around their work intensifies, Meera and her team face threats that are reflected in more democracies across the world, making their work even more significant. In this climate of fear, we observe Meera beginning to follow the political rise of 21-year-old Satyam, an upcoming youth leader with a popular Hindu vigilante organisation.
At grave risk to herself, Meera gains Satyam’s trust and through his story, begins work on a long form journalistic piece that investigates the changing moral and social fabric of India and what it's consequences are. We see her follow him into his village, where he wields significant political clout; we witness her calmly engaging with him as he reveals his deepest prejudices; as he shrewdly begins to prepare the grounds for his own ambitions to contest in the national elections. For Meera, Satyam’s story is as offensive as tragic and represents the broken dreams of India’s youth, as they get sucked into a political discourse of hate and violence, a story that is, yet again, missing from India’s mainstream media. Between doing her risky work and negotiating the editorial hurdles, Meera’s personal life is continually challenged. The inherent violence of caste which Meera fights vehemently through her work, is ever-present in her own life. Landlords rarely want to rent to a Dalit woman, let alone a Dalit woman journalist who works late nights. How does Meera continue to negotiate such systemic inequity and what do we discover about her as we see her raising two young daughters? On the other hand, Suneeta grows in stature and becomes the first reporter to travel internationally to deliver a speech at a journalism conclave. She also begins hosting her own crime show on 'YouTube', which soon becomes wildly popular.
But at home, the pressure to get married intensifies. Suneeta knows that marriage will be a death-blow to her professional ambitions because prospective grooms do not want a working wife. Will Suneeta fight for her dreams or compromise for her family? With exclusive access to the personal and rapidly changing professional worlds of Meera and her journalists, we see them negotiate obstacles and inch closer to their dream of becoming a relevant independent regional news agency. But how will Meera re-wire the traditional mindsets of a society that has never experienced the power of a Dalit woman with a smartphone? And with Suneeta at the cusp of making a critical choice, how will Meera raise a next line of leadership? "Writing With Fire" is a story of our times. It's the first time modern Dalit women will be seen on screen, not as victims of their circumstances but as writers of their own destiny. As India now stands at a pivotal crossroad, the choices we make will define our future as a nation. And Meera and her team have their mobile phones trained on us, interpreting this precious moment in our history as powerful witnesses. In bringing together these different but deeply connected layers, "Writing With Fire" stays close to it's characters while exploring a country’s deep, complex wounds, the story lies in how our characters are treating these wounds; with compassion and persistence.
This film is about Dalit women running a newsroom. They’re unfettered rural women who are aware of the limitations of print and want to grow their impact to draw in more women. Using digital in a smart way and making it their own feels like just the right story. It's a story about outliers, people who are outside the system and chipping away at it on their own in powerful ways. We love an unlikely protagonist who has something to offer that the world is not expecting from them. Uttar Pradesh, like much of the country, is a media landscape that's male-dominated, typically upper caste. For context, 'The Editors Guild Of India', which is the most powerful representative body for journalists in the country, has only one Dalit journalist on the panel and that’s a Khabar Lahariya woman journalist. Uttar Pradesh, specifically the regions that they work in, the profile of journalists is primarily upper caste men. There are no independent women journalists working there, except the women at Khabar Lahariya. In that sense, that really makes their presence quite prolific because the lens with which they are viewing stories is very, very different from how mainstream media is reporting it. Before the shift from print to digital they're printing about five thousand papers every two weeks, so they calculated their readership to be roughly fifteen thousand a month. Now they’re growing exponentially in the millions month by month. It speaks for the power of their journalism and the fact that the demographic has expanded.
The question is about the lens. They're questioning what's considered newsworthy? What's news? Who's counted? Who decides that this story should be told? And that’s at the forefront of all the reporting that they've done consistently. The feminist lens is what completely distinguishes them from the clutter that news is at the moment. Having a diversified newsroom is a global conversation right now. In the west you've middle-aged white men who are essentially leading all decisions around what considered news and newsworthy or not. But what happens when you let in people of color into positions of organizational leadership? Khabar Lahariya is a unique model because it’s entirely led by women. And these are not just women. These are women who are literally at the bottom of India’s social pyramid. It ranges from curiosity to mansplaining and derision, as you see in the film, to respect. It’s a wide spectrum because people are not used to seeing Dalit women with a camera, asking intelligent question, negotiating smartly, following up on stories and calling out for accountability. That’s never happened, and to do it in the most non-violent way, stumps them. That’s the range that we’ve seen amongst their peers. Or the dynamics between women within an organization and how it plays out. These are visuals that are missing from India’s mainstream narrative around the Dalit identity.
India is a deeply complex country. For over 3,000 years, we’ve a social hierarchy in place that divides Indian society into four distinct groups of people, known as the caste system. Like racism, it's a system of exclusion but only worse, because caste is invisible. A person is considered a member of the caste they're born into and remains within that caste till their death, caste sticks to the deepest part of your being; your identity. Perhaps the world’s longest surviving social hierarchy, this discriminatory practice is officially banned under Indian law but is still strictly practiced in many parts of India. Dalits are a section of Indian society who are considered so dirty, that they're not given a place within the caste system. And they continue to endure some of the most brutal forms of oppression and violence witnessed anywhere in the country, a Dalit person can be lynched simply for crossing paths with an upper caste. Now imagine what it might mean to be a Dalit woman; you’re literally at the bottom of India’s social pyramid, you've no agency, you’re absolutely invisible. This is what interested in Meera’s work, especially when she saw transitioning her newspaper from print to digital. The film is interested in seeing how Dalit women would employ technology and the internet to amplify their voice; when most print broadsheets in the world are uneasily adapting to the digital medium, we're witnessing rural women strategise to grow in a highly competitive upper-caste, male-dominated news landscape; and in their work for justice, they began redefining how Dalit women are perceived in Indian society.
All this is playing out in the backdrop of an India that's transitioning from a secular democracy to right-wing nationalism, led by a Hindu majoritarian party that's trying to reinforce the caste system in every aspect of life. So the work of Meera and her journalists becomes even more phenomenal, almost a 'David versus Goliath' narrative, because they're challenging forces much larger than her, where the pen becomes mightier than the sword. In telling this story, the documentary creates a narrative that allows the viewer to see Meera’s world from within, intimately and respectfully, and experience a story that's as unique, as it's universal. "Writing With Fire" chronicles the astonishing determination of these local reporters as they empower each other and hold those responsible for injustice to account. Reaching new audiences through their growing platform, the women of Khabar Lahariya redefine what it means to be powerful in this timely and inspiring documentary. The changing political atmosphere has an effect on press freedom in the countryǃ It’s a global conversation. It’s something that you've witnessed from the Philippines, all the way to the U.S. and Trump. It’s a challenge the world now faces, the shrinking space for free press. It's a challenging time in India and in any other part of the world to be an independent journalist. Also, there’s this whole idea of how the media has been monetized, how big money has been pumped in where there's little space for independent journalism.
