‘I remember choking you’
Hot Docs documentary follows former high school couple as they discuss how he hurt her
Attiya Khan, sitting across the table from her former boyfriend, asks if he can describe the way he abused her.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “That’s tough. That never leaves your mind.”
Steve — who abused Khan daily for the two years they dated and lived together as teenagers, decades before this meeting — swallows, looks down, shakes his head and then looks back at her.
“I remember choking you,” he says. “I don’t really remember hitting much, but I remember that.”
This is one of several pointed questions Khan asks in the consensually taped conversation that opens A Better Man, a dialogue-driven documentary that looks deep into an abusive relationship as it was experienced and continues to linger through the lives of both people involved.
The documentary, co-directed by Khan and Toronto-based filmmaker Lawrence Jackman, will have its world premiere at Hot Docs this Sunday. Sarah Polley is an executive producer on the project.
In the film, Khan, 43, and Steve, whose last name is never disclosed, visit the Ottawa apartment they used to share, walk through the halls of their former high school and discuss their past with and without a counsellor present. They recall details of the violence that occurred throughout their relationship.
“There is something so satisfying about being able to tell the person who hurt you what exactly it is they did,” Khan tells the Star in an email.
She says when Steve started being accountable for his behaviour, 20-plus years later, she felt she was finally able to start healing.
“I no longer have nightmares about being hurt. Flashbacks of incidents of vio- lence I experienced are happening a lot less. I don’t anticipate violence wherever I go. I’m sleeping better. I feel a sense of calm and happiness I haven’t felt before,” she says.
In the film, they visit the spot where their lockers used to be — Steve remembers the location, while Khan barely recognizes the school’s hallways. She says she rarely looked up when she was a student there, afraid Steve would catch her glancing the wrong way.
Beginning a couple of years after Khan left Steve, the two began bumping into each other in the streets.
At one of the more recent encounters a few years ago, she asked him if he’d speak with her on camera about their relationship, suggesting the insight might be helpful to others experiencing violence.
About half a year later, he reached out and said he was ready to try.
Khan had initially wanted to make a film about the perpetrators of abuse and the counsellors who work with them. Early on, she had only planned to have a small role as a subject in the film herself. But, she tells the Star, she realized it might be tough to find others who would speak on record about their own violent actions. She wanted to show both sides of the story and have it led by someone who had experienced abuse, so she and Steve became the focus of the film.
“It’s not often we hear about people being accountable to those they have harmed,” she says.
Khan says that going into the project, she hadn’t considered that people who have been violent could work toward living a completely non-violent life.
She says her talks with Steve changed the way she approaches her work as an advocate and counsellor for those who experience domestic violence. She thinks believing people can change can be powerful enough to save lives.
“Many people don’t want to hear from people who use violence. We hold anger towards people who have hurt others. This is a valid emotion. However, it’s okay to be angry and care for someone who has used violence.”
Both filmmakers say some scenes will be hard to watch and that it’s intentional — they want to show what these discussions looks like.
To stop violence, Khan says, both the violent person and the abused person can benefit from access to resources and support.
“Talking to Attiya is the reason I’m healing,” Steve said in a statement to the National Film Board of Canada.
“If we hadn’t done this, she might know that I’m sorry, but those are just words. I’m hoping that really sitting down and doing this is showing her how sorry I am.”
Steve told Khan he never abused anyone before his relationship with her. Khan says she hasn’t asked him whether or not he’s ever used violence against anyone since. She says she knows revisiting their past was hard for Steve too, and thinks he was brave for agreeing to take part in the film.
Khan says no one should feel pressure to reconnect with the person who was violent to them if they don’t want to. For those who want to try it, she suggests looking into local resources that might be able to assist with the encounters.
Khan hopes her film makes it in front of policymakers, schools and those working in criminal justice system and social services.
She wants them to think how they can help people on both sides of violent relationships.
“We all need to collaborate and invest in resources that provide a whole range of options for people who have experienced violence to find justice, support and healing,” she says. “One path towards justice isn’t enough.” Tickets to screenings on April 30, May 1 and May 6 are available online. A Better Man is presented by the National Film Board of Canada and Intervention Productions, in association with TVO.