Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Meera Devi, Shyamkali Devi, Suneeta Prajapati
Intro:
… will make your heart swell.
Way back in 2002, in the Northern Indian state of Utter Pradesh, a group of rural women from disadvantaged communities set up their own newspaper. Written, edited, marketed and distributed by women, Khabar Lahariya was expected to flop almost immediately, such was the public opinion of the Dalit journalists who worked there. Now, nearly 20 years later the little paper that could is still pushing forward and unsettling the right people.
Directed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas, Writing with Fire follows the new group as they start making their first tentative steps into the digital marketplace. The reasoning by Meera, their Chief Reporter, is sound: more reach, means more revenue for the writers. However, for writers like Shyamkali, trepidation comes in the form of wrestling with the technology to push them forward. While Meera is happy to run workshops to train the journalists to use their new phones, issues still arise at home. Tenacious reporter Suneeta has no problems with the phones, but power banks are redundant to her as the home she shares with her family has no electricity.
Brushing up on sending emails is only a small part of the challenges that this band of sisters faces. Dalit journalists are largely unheard of, never mind female ones. So, as Meera and her team tackle news stories from police indifference towards sexual assault through to corrupt mining practices, they regularly find themselves having to prove themselves to not only the people they interview, but the men deemed as their professional peers. After being talked down to during a press conference with an official, Suneeta is later subjected to tea and mansplaining by the men in the room who find that she’s being too aggressive in her stance.
Ghosh and Thomas shine a light on the women’s homelife as well, highlighting a contrast between how their work is seen by their supporters online and behind closed doors.
Shyamkali had to report her husband for domestic violence after she refused to quit her job. Suneeta is loved by her parents but their community gossips about why a single woman would be out all night. Meanwhile, Meera, who has an MA in Political Science, has a husband who gets what she does, but finds that it wouldn’t be a terrible idea if she downed tools to look after the house.
With the camera up close and personal throughout, Writing with Fire is an absorbing portrait of a group of women literally going up against the odds in order to support their community. Given the subject matter of their news stories, it’s arguable to call this a feel-good film in the traditional sense. However, watching Shyamkali go from not understanding what an ‘angle’ is in journalism to standing her ground in front of condescending police officers will make your heart swell.
