ProvokedTheMovie.Com

It’s a story about brutality, humiliation and the horrors of domestic violence.

Aishwarya Rai, Nandita Das and Naveen Andrews star in the much-anticipated film [1] Provoked, due to be released worldwide this Easter weekend. Directed by [2] Jagmohan Mundhra, the movie is based on the life of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, a woman who, after being abused physically and sexually by her husband for 10 years, murdered him in their Southall London home in 1989.

Ahulwalia was sentenced to life in prison—a conviction she would later appeal with the help of the [3] Southall Black Sisters (SBS), a non-profit that helps women who are victims of gender violence.

“SBS has shown Asian women the road to independence and self-confidence,” [4] Ahulwalia has said, “What they did for me could have been done by no-one else.They have brought light into my darkness.”

According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, a crime is carried out against women in India [5] once every three minutes. More locally, a recent study suggests [6] an astounding 40 percent of the South Asian women living in the Boston metropolitan area have been victims of “intimate partner violence” at one point or another.

Look for a longer story on the film in an upcoming issue of Nirali.

More: Non-profit groups like [7] Sakhi and [8] Manavi help women cope; Ahulwalia’s [9] autobiography Circle of Light; [10] Aishwarya Rai fan site; Watch [11] the Provoked trailer here; [12] Ash and Abi news on Nirali