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9 months ago
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Major news today for Oscar-nominee To Kill a Tiger. Actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas is joining the award-winning feature documentary as an executive producer, alongside Dev Patel, Mindy Kaling, and other bold-faced names. The news comes as Netflix inks a deal to launch the film globally on its platform soon.
“Priyanka has stood as an unwavering advocate for the film since debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022,” a release noted, “captivated by its poignant narrative depicting a father’s valiant struggle within the judicial system to secure justice for his daughter.”
To Kill a Tiger, directed by Nisha Pahuja, has earned two dozen awards around the world, including Best Documentary at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the Amplify Voices Award at TIFF, and Best Feature Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards. Pahuja earned the 2023 Excellence in Documentary Award from the Directors Guild of Canada. It managed to make the Oscar documentary shortlist and then earn a nomination despite having no U.S. distribution; the Netflix deal will finally change that.
Pahuja spent eight years working on the film, which centers on Ranjit, a poor farmer whose 13-year-old daughter Kiran became the victim of a brutal sexual assault. Pressured by his village to drop charges against the three young men accused of the attack, Ranjit and his wife Jiganti refused. The film takes place in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand (where Priyanka Chopra Jonas was born).
To Kill a Tiger, a release comments, “serves as a testament to the boundless love and unyielding determination of a devoted father for his cherished daughter.”
Along with Chopra, Patel, and Kaling, fellow executive producers are Dr. Atul Gawande, the surgeon and bestselling author, Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, writer-producer Andy Cohen (Beijing Spring), Anita Lee, Andrew Dragoumis, Shivani Rawat, Mona Sinha (Equality Now), Mala Gaonkar (Surgo Foundation), Regina Scully, Anita Bhatia, Niraj Bhatia, Deepa Mehta and others.
This is the first Oscar nomination for Pahuja, the Toronto-based filmmaker who was born in India and raised in Canada. Her credits include the Emmy nominated 2014 documentary feature The World Before Her, docuseries Diamond Road (2007), and 2002 documentary feature Bollywood Bound.
Pahuja was attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah when the Oscar nominations were announced on Jan. 23. “When they actually called out our title, I was a little beside myself, I have to say. I couldn’t believe it,” the director told Deadline that morning. “It’s so surreal.”
As Deadline reports in our newly-published Oscar-themed magazine, Ranjit and his family, as well as Pahuja and her film team faced death threats during the making of the documentary. At one point, villagers angered by the family’s refusal to abandon the case descended upon Ranjit’s home and threatened to set fire to it while the family and the filmmakers were inside. The dangerous circumstances forced Pahuja to consider halting the production.
“Our primary concern was the family and how did they feel, and what did they want us to do? Did they want us to keep filming? Should we stop? And they didn’t,” Pahuja told Deadline. “They wanted us to keep filming… They understood that the camera actually afforded them a kind of protection. They felt that because we were filming, nobody would ever do anything. They would think twice.”
Producers of To Kill a Tiger include Notice Pictures Inc’s Pahuja, Cornelia Principe, and the National Board of Canada’s David Oppenheim.
