Salma

2014 • 89 Minuten

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When Salma, a young Muslim girl in a south Indian village, was 13 years old, her family locked her up for 25 years, forbidding her to study and forcing her into marriage. During that time, words became Salma's salvation. She began covertly composing poems on scraps of paper and, through an intricate system, was able to smuggle them out of the house, eventually getting them into the hands of a publisher. Against the odds, Salma became the most famous Tamil poet: the first step to discovering her own freedom and challenging the traditions and code of conduct in her village.
This startling doc offers shocking insights into the state of child wives, neutered of their freedom the moment their periods begin. Salma's elegiac poems chart the destruction of generations of dreams, of women forced to live life according to the will of men. Her melancholy tone is suffused with the haunting beauty of memorable verse - lines that caused a country to take notice of the inner plight of so many like Salma.
As with her other work (Pink Saris, Rough Aunties), master documentarian Kim Longinotto trains her camera on an iconoclastic woman. Salma's extraordinary story is one of courage and resilience, and Longinotto follows her on an eye-opening trip back to her village. Salma has hopes for a different life for the next generation of girls, but as she witnesses, familial ties run deep, and change happens very slowly.