Bandit Queen

Phoolan Devi is married off at eleven in exchange for a bicycle. She runs from her husband's house, suffers upper-caste violence in her village, and then joins an armed gang. Before long she leads her own. After what happens at the village of Behmai her name is known across India, and she finally surrenders in 1983. The subject is not banditry but how the caste order distributes violence. Behind every attack in the film is a caste difference, and the state works to preserve that difference; Phoolan taking up arms is presented not as a choice but as the only route left. The form is hard and unadorned. The scenes of violence are held long and the viewer is given no exit; Shekhar Kapur does it deliberately, and the argument about the film starts exactly there. Its legal history cannot be separated from it. Phoolan Devi went to court in 1994 before the Indian release, saying her life had been built on a partial account and that events she was not present for had been attributed to her. The film was banned by court order. The censorship appellate tribunal rejected major cuts in 1995 and the Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that the scenes were integral to the story, clearing the way for release. Seema Biswas plays Phoolan and Nirmal Pandey the gang leader. Who it is for: viewers interested in India's social structure and hard biography. Who it is not for: anyone unprepared for scenes of sexual violence; the warning is real and the film stays in them.