‘THERE’S A WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES THAT THEY’RE CREATING’

The directing team behind Writing With Fire talks about the inspiring female journalists in their Oscar-nominated documentary

The globally pressing issue of social media’s role in the rise of both civilian journalism and dangerous populist politics is given vivid and particular expression in Music Box Films’ Writing With Fire, Oscar-nominated for best documentary feature. The film, co-directed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas, is many additional things, however: an empowering tale of socially marginalized women banding together to turn the tables on their assumed victim status, a vivid window into the streetlevel life of rural India and a call to arms over the essential value of the fourth estate to the world’s ailing democracies.

At the film’s center are the journalists of Khabar Lahariya, India’s only all-female-run newspaper. Composed entirely of members of the Dalit caste, India’s most marginalized social group formerly known as “the untouchables,” Khabar Lahariya’s staff is introduced at a time of transition. Not only do they face constant resistance to their pioneering work by a male-dominated industry and culture, the staffers are tasked with transforming their paper from a local print operation into a digital news organization with national reach. Many of the women on the team have never even used a smartphone before, but they readily grasp the amplifying role digital media may offer to their mission of speaking truth to power, be it in the form of official corruption, a pervasive local rape culture, everyday class discrimination or the rise of Hindu nationalism.

Ghosh and Thomas spoke to THR about the four years they spent shooting the fearless women of Khabar Lahariya in the remote Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and their subjects’ compassionate and vital work.

How did you come to the story in the first place?

RINTU THOMAS We saw a photo story online. It was a very striking image of a woman walking across the arid landscape of a very small village in Uttar Pradesh, and she had a newspaper in her hand. The story was about how she herself had reported, produced and is now distributing this newspaper with her women’s collective. That was the first time we got to know about Khabar Lahariya’s work. We got very interested in an all-women newspaper in a region where journalism is not considered the profession of a woman, let alone women from marginalized communities. We reached out to them and met them a couple of times, and we got to know that they

were having a meeting in their regional office in Uttar Pradesh, where the entire team was coming together to debate a pivot to digital. We got really intrigued about what this meeting could be. How are they going to make this transition, and how will it change their work? The temperature in the room was very revealing — there was excitement, there was nervousness, there was the sense of leaping light-years ahead and not knowing where you’re going to land. It felt like this could be a conversation in a newsroom in any part of the world, but it was happening in a very particular part of rural India.

What was the process of gaining their trust and permission to enter their world?

SUSHMIT GHOSH Very early on, they asked us, “How are you going to present us?” We said, “We’re interested in how you’re going to make this transition as a newspaper, but we’re really interested in how you as women are going to navigate this extremely complex world that

Writing With Fire directors Sushmit Ghosh (left) and Rintu Thomas spent four years filming the all-female staff of Khabar Lahariya, a newspaper in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.