India's Daughter

Beginning as an episode of the BBC series Storyville that sparked such outrage in India it was banned by the government, Leslee Udwin's award-winning documentary focuses on the brutal gang rape and murder of 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh as she returned home from a cinema on a Delhi bus. Her own mission in life had been to help break down gender inequalities of patriarchal society by defying the very societal norms that got her killed. Gaining unprecedented access to the perpetrators in jail, Udwin makes much of an interview with Mukesh Singh, the bus driver—who's now on death row for his role in the tragedy—by way of delving deeper into the misogyny that pervades India across social and educational strata. But she also traces a silver lining around the heinous crime: it brought the disadvantages Indian women face from birth into the international spotlight, inciting fierce uprisings across the country that may yet prove to be a catalyst for long-overdue change. (Denver International Film Festival)