IFFLA ‘09 : Yes Madam, Sir
When director Megan Doneman and Dr. Kiran Bedi were called on stage to present the film, the over 350 – 500 audience stood up and clapped to welcome the first Indian woman cop and the director of the documentary. And many in the audience were still unaware of who Kiran Bedi was, until they saw the documentary.
The same standing ovation followed the ending of the film, when both the ladies were called on stage for the Q&A on the documentary.
Doneman, from Australia, spent six years on and off following Kiran Bedi with a camera to record her life for the documentary. We came to know during the Q&A that Doneman, while travelling by train from Mumbai to Delhi to meet Bedi, was robbed of all her belongings. Still she calmly went to Bedi’s house, had tea, waited for Bedi, and upon Kiran’s arrival had a discussion about the documentary and what she aimed for completely forgetting that she was sitting in a cop’s house where she could have asked the cop for helping her recover her robbed belongings!
That according to Bedi, was the point, which upon realizing Doneman’s situation, she immediately agreed to do the documentary.
Over the next six years Doneman, would be in India for a few months and then go back to Australia, to work and save money for a months, and return to Indian again for a few months to work on the documentary.
Many Indians may know much about Bedi and her battles she fought in the line of duty and against the system. Doneman goes a step further into the life of Bedi that we may not have seen before. In the end it’s about two women with lots of guts and heart, one who fought the corrupt system all her life and the other who in spite of all odds worked for six years to see her mission of making the film was achieved.
The documentary packs a whole lot of punch and isn’t afraid to show the corrupt system at the highest level. It also inspires one to stand up and fight their battles which compared to Bedi’s, now shall appear quite tame and small. And that’s where Doneman scores big.
This is a must-be-released in the theaters documentary. It rarely lets you off its hook and inspires you no end. Doneman mentioned she was still working to find distribution for her film in India. We hope a distributor picks up this movie soon. To know about the film, visit the documentary’s website
Excerpts from the documentary
Tags: Documentary, Kiran Bedi
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
thanks for this info will try and watch it :- )
Hopefully it will release somewhere…somehow…btw there is a video on youtube with 3/4 short clippings of the documentary…
Looks honest and hard-hitting…
looking frwrd fr d release, if it does get released