US documentary festival to screen movie by Indian Catholic

One of the movie is on female genocide.

International:  The United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF), one of the oldest solely documentary film festivals in the US, this year will feature a movie on female genocide by a Catholic film maker who grew up in India.

The documentary “Petals in the Dust: The Endangered Indian Girls” by Nyna Pais Caputihas been selected for the19th UNAFF to be held from Oct. 20-30 in Palo Alto, Stanford University, East Palo Alto and San Francisco.

The UNAFF, originally conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, provides early outlets for documentaries from all over the world.

“As they are focused primarily on human rights, we believe this is an excellent platform to raise awareness, broaden the reach of the film and shed light on the condition of an endangered people in one of the most populous, culturally and economically vibrant countries in the world, modern India,” said Pais Caputi, who has settled in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Because of a preference for boys, “50 million women were killed in India in the last century, that is more than the number of people killed in World War I and II, more than those who lost their lives in the Holocaust,” said Pais Caputi.

“This is genocide and cannot be ignored any longer. Although India's economy is booming, women in India continue to be victims of extreme violence from the womb to the tomb through sex-selective abortions, infanticide, dowry deaths, trafficking and rape.”

The film profiles the stories of women who survived, and also tells the stories of some of those who did not.

Over the years UNAFF has screened some of the most awarded and talked about documentaries in the industry, including seven that went on to win Academy Awards and twenty-eight that were nominated.

The UNAFF theme this year is “Compass for a Better World” which the festival organizers said on their website “continues the ongoing celebration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and focuses on various aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals.” The films to be screened were selected by a 28-member jury committee which reviewed almost 700 submissions for the 60-hour long festival program.

Source: Catholic San Francisco