Documentary Analysis - the World Before Her

Documentary Analysis - The World before Her The documentary movie by Nisha Pahuja takes the audience into the two distinct yet familiar lives of two young girls, Ruhi and Prachi, they are struggling in the modern world and both are fighting for their equality as Indian women. Ruhi seeks fame and freedom by entering a beauty contest, where Prachi supports her religion and tradition by attending a Hindu extremist camp. The intention of this film is to bring awareness of the world to the inequality of women in India as little opportunity offers woman the same business equality of men, and there are two contradicting worlds in current India of modern trend represented by Ruhi vs. the traditional Hindu beliefs represented by Prachi. Ruhi and Prachi are not equals to their opposite sex; they did not receive the proper education from their school and are treated very differently by their parents. They both live very separate lives and have different belief system. Ruhi’s family is modernized and supports their daughter’s motives, where Prachi’s father is very traditional and strict, he demands Prachi to be good, and had used physical abuse to punish Prachi, thus making her reflects this and bares hatred on others by acting aggressive to other children; she wants to “slap” the camp’s less powered students for acting “girly and weak”. The point of view are the mainly the two girls, but there are some bias presented by the author, where she questioned Prachi that her motives contradict her religion beliefs. This movie captures the viewer’s attention by addressing the serious and difficult issues such as the equality of women and men, using exciting soundtrack and interesting footage, such as the techno music played for the Miss India competition, and the footage of Ruhi and her fellow students protesting on the streets. By following Ruhi, the author edits some of the film, and emphasizes on where she thought was important, such as