Subina Shrestha’s ‘Devi’ Traces Nepalese Activist’s Path From Survivor of Sexual Violence to Seeker of Justice (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Jennie Punter Filmmaker and journalist Subina Shrestha’s “Devi”—about Devi Khadka’s journey from surviving wartime rape to fighting alongside rebel guerrillas in Nepal’s civil war to working for justice in her country’s transitional justice movement—lands at Toronto’s Hot Docs as international awareness of and concern about the safety, rights, and health of women in conflict zones around the world intensifies.

Last month in the Hague, in opening remarks at the first International Conference of Prosecutors on Accountability for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (also referred to as CRSV), U.N.

special representative Pramila Patten noted that the Secretary-General’s annual report for 2023 shows an increase of 49% in the number of cases of CRSV from the previous year.

In an exclusive in-person interview with Variety in advance of her film’s world premiere on April 28, Shrestha said that Devi’s story is both unique and universal. (Devi was scheduled to attend the premiere but her visa was not ready in time.) “Every country that has war has the same stories of sexual violence but they never get attention in reparations,” said Shrestha, noting that the U.N.’s Security Council Resolution 1820—which recognizes the use of sexual violence as a tool or tactic of war and stresses that such crimes should be excluded from amnesty provisions—was only adopted in 2008. “In Nepal, nobody had raised this issue of sexual violence after the civil war ended,” she continued. “People who were wounded and families of the dead were compensated but people who experienced sexual violence were shunned.” Early in the civil war, which erupted in 1996 between Maoist guerrillas and the monarchy government, Devi was accused of rebellion.