Oscar-Shortlisted ‘Writing With Fire’ Documents Indian Women Journalists Who Beat The Odds To Create Reporting Powerhouse

deadline.com:

Collective earned an Oscar nomination last year for documenting the work of brave investigative reporters in Romania. This year, one of the feature documentaries in contention for Oscar recognition focuses on another group of crusading journalists — the staff of Khabar Lahariya, India’s only newspaper run entirely by women.Writing With Fire, directed by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, explores the enormous obstacles Khabar Lahariya has faced to stay in business and hold the powerful accountable.

The staff of women faces constant sexism, from officials and ordinary people they interview, and in many cases, from within their own families.Khabar Lahariya was founded by Dalit women, members of the lowest caste within India – another reason the odds were stacked against the newspaper.

But as the film notes, the women did not give up – “Instead, they stirred a revolution.”In a statement provided exclusively to Deadline, the directors explained the origins of their documentary.“Writing With Fire began with a simple photo that we saw online of a Dalit woman reporter from Khabar Lahariya in a sea of male onlookers,” Thomas and Ghosh say. “It was a powerful image that led to us asking ourselves: What is journalism?

Who counts as newsworthy? Which stories should we be telling?”Khabar Lahariya, a term that means “waves of news,” was founded in 2002.