Herself
Herself
A documentary about young girls forced into marriage.
2008-01-01
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Two Bangladeshi girls born and raised in London have weddings arranged for them against their will by their family. Shahanara, the rebel of the family, banished from the family in her teens for being "too Western", has to swap her pink hot pants for a sari as she goes off to the airport to meet her new Bangladeshi husband. Her sister Hushnara is the opposite of Shahanara; a devout Muslim who agrees to marry so she doesn't upset her parents.
At 14 Rabha El Haimer was an illiterate child bride, beaten, raped and then rejected. Ten years later, she is a single mother, fighting to legalise her sham marriage and secure a future for her illegitimate daughter. With unprecedented access to the Moroccan justice system, “Bastards” follows Rabha’s fight from the Casablanca slums to the high courts.
It's a condition known as "hypertrichosis" or "Ambras Syndrome," but in the 1500s it would transform one man into a national sensation and iconic fairy-tale character. His name: Petrus Gonsalvus, more commonly known today as the hairy hero of Beauty and the Beast.
A Suitable Girl follows three young women in India struggling to maintain their identities and follow their dreams amid intense pressure to get married. The film examines the women's complex relationship with marriage, family, and society.
Child marriages have been an unnoticed reality in some sections of the Muslim community in Sri Lanka. This film tells the story of Fatima, a 16-year old school girl, who is set to marry a man far older than her. Not only her right to education is denied but her consent to marriage too. Until she accidentally meets her future husband, she has not even seen him. She is caught up between her hopes and the reality of her destiny.
Nepalese women are telling their stories arranged marriages. In the jungle of western Nepal lives Fofo, who is married off at the age of 10 to a man of 20. When Thuli becomes a widow after 10 childbirths she is mocked at by both neighbours and relatives. Savitri did not even know the name of the groom she was marrying and she was not even allowed to see him during the wedding ceremony. Nepalese law does not allow child marriage but the law does not reach girls who have never been to school and are living in areas with no roads. This film shows some of the reasons behind the 40 % guerrilla women in the Nepalese Maoist army.
A mute Scottish woman arrives in colonial New Zealand for an arranged marriage. Her husband refuses to move her beloved piano, giving it to neighbor George Baines, who agrees to return the piano in exchange for lessons. As desire swirls around the duo, the wilderness consumes the European enclave.
In 18th century France, Marquise de Merteuil asks her ex-lover Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the future wife of another ex-lover of hers in return for one last night with her. Yet things don’t go as planned.
Shoko and Mutsuki get married to satisfy their worried parents, but she is well past the age at which a 'good' Japanese woman should marry, and he is in love with a young male college student. The film is less a realistic exploration of gay life than a fairy tale of three young Japanese trying to construct an alternative to the sexual and familial roles given to them by a society turning increasingly emotionally barren.
TV writer Elliott Nash buries a blackmailer under the new gazebo in his suburban backyard. But the nervous man can't let the body rest there.
Danielle, a vibrant young woman is forced into servitude after the death of her father when she was a young girl. Danielle's stepmother Rodmilla is a heartless woman who forces Danielle to do the cooking and cleaning, while she tries to marry off the eldest of her two daughters to the prince. But Danielle's life takes a wonderful turn when, under the guise of a visiting royal, she meets the charming Prince Henry.
The young Harold lives in his own world of suicide-attempts and funeral visits to avoid the misery of his current family and home environment. Harold meets an 80-year-old woman named Maude who also lives in her own world yet one in which she is having the time of her life. When the two opposites meet they realize that their differences don’t matter and they become best friends and love each other.
As the romantic monsoon rains loom, the extended Verma family reunites from around the globe for a last-minute arranged marriage in New Delhi. This film traces five intersecting stories, each navigating different aspects of love as they cross boundaries of class, continent and morality.
Apu is a jobless ex-student dreaming vaguely of a future as a writer. An old college friend talks him into a visit up-country to a village wedding. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1996.
Fed up with his carefree attitude, Prasanth's father fixes his marriage to make him responsible. However, meeting an ambitious girl changes his life for the better.
A family goes to a village near Mangalore to finalize a bride for the elder son, Lucky, played by Pavan Kumar. Lucky is a US-based software professional, and is a teetotaler, always abiding by the pressure and demands of his parents, so much to the fact that he does not have the courage to speak out that he already has a girlfriend. Bharath Kumar, the youngest son, the character played by Diganth, is a carefree individual with weird ideas on life. Bharath meets a tomboyish girl, Ambika, who is the house-owner's niece, and they begin to mingle well due to the nature of their personalities. However, following a few unusual twists and turns, the alliance is called off and the groom's family members walk out due to embarrassment. Ambika, who has now developed a strong feeling of love towards Bharath, goes ahead and confronts him. And finally, Bharath too says yes.
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
A mother tries to appease the moods and demands of her borderline psychopathic son. When a new girl comes to town, her son falls quickly and deeply for the new girl and is determined to win her over possibly even against her will. When things take a tragic turn, his mother will stop at nothing to make her son happy even if it means finding a bride to join him in the afterlife.