Bandit Queen

This harrowing, wilfully controversial epic tells the story of Phoolan Devi (Seema Biswas), the near-legendary leader of a gang of brigands who roamed north central India during the late 70s and early 80s; she became a folk hero after taking bloody revenge against the upper-caste men who raped her. The film opens in rural Uttar Pradesh in 1968, as 11-year-old Phoolan (Sunita Bhatt) is married off to a grown man (Aditya Srivastava). When Phoolan resists his sexual demands, he rapes and later abandons her. She returns to her village a social outcast. As an adult, she fends off an attempted rape by an upper-caste villager. Accused of various crimes by the village headme...