Educational Media Reviews Online

“In a poll of the Group of Twenty (G-20) countries, India was ranked as the worst nation in which to be a woman.” (2012 Trust Law Poll, Thomas Reuters Foundation.) After watching this documentary, I can clearly understand why. I find it difficult to describe this emotional, feature-length documentary from filmmaker Nyna Pais Caputi. When I think of global human rights abuse, rarely does it make sense to kill, abandon, maim, deprive, devalue, or torture based on one’s gender. Yet, along comes this very distressing documentary to remind the world just how inhumane a society can be to accept, allow, and continue to practice infanticide, genocide, sex-selective abortion, abandonment, rape, domestic violence, and other forms of horrific crimes towards its female population.

Petals in the Dust details the filmmaker’s personal journey to illuminate systematic female death and oppression over the past thousand years. An estimated 50 million girls have lost their lives over the past century. For women who risk giving birth to female babies, there lies unnatural obstacles from birth to adulthood. Obstacles can include abandonment, abuse, death, kidnapping, forced marriage, gang-rape, becoming a labor and sex-slave, domestic violence from the spouse and his family, torture for the slightest offense, and divorce without provocation. The overwhelming brainwashing of, and pressure for women to give birth to sons is not only psychologically debilitating to a women’s well-being, but it has also spawned a billion dollar industry that forces women to take sex-determination testing via sonograms and ultrasounds.

Unfortunately, global awareness of the problem in India did not fully surface until the horrific 2012 brutal attack, gang rape, and eventual death of a 23-year-old female medical student in Delhi, India. Her death inspired national and international protesters to call for the abandonment of India’s medieval and barbaric treatment against girls and women. It also called for the creation of more orphanages, shelters, and organizations, such as “Empower People” to rescue thousands of abandoned and abused girls and women from their daily suffering and oppressors.

In conclusion, Indian women are on the rise to reclaim their bodies through social programs and education. They are accepting and keeping their daughters. Women and young girls are refusing to succumb to traditions within an unjust patriarchal society. These women are survivors who speak out each day to end the denigration and annihilation of females, and put an end to human rights abuse.

I highly recommend this film for high school, public, and academic libraries. The film should serve well in gender studies, and for the promotion of human rights activism and organizations.

Awards:

• Best Documentary Film at the San Francisco Global Film Fest
• Best International Documentary Film, Vancouver International South Asian Film Festival