Many harrowing stories of rape and sexual assault of women in India have emerged in the international media over the years. The director of a documentary about one such case told us about her fight to have the problem addressed.
Leslee Udwin is the director of 'India's Daughter', a documentary about a high profile rape case in India in 2012, involving a medical student who had gone to see a film with a male friend.
The young woman was brutally raped by six men. She sadly passed away 13 days later, after undergoing seven operations.
Afterwards, hundreds of thousands of Indian women and men protested on the streets in an incredible display of solidarity.
Leslee pointed out that such stories are not unique to India - they emanate from all over the world. She also spoke about the attitudes she faced from the men responsible for the attack while making the documentary.
"I imagined that I was going to be sitting in front of animals and psychopaths, but that was not the case. They were incredibly normal and unremarkable men who had been taught to think a certain way by their culture."
"They displayed absolutely no remorse. They saw this as her fault - she was out at night with a boy who wasn't her husband or her brother. If we want to change the dynamics of this iniquitous problem across our world, we need to put our attention to the root of the problem."
The documentary has been banned in India, but Leslee doesn't see this as a deterrent: "The naivety of a government that thinks it can ban a film in the digital age is staggering."
She described the process of making the film as "the darkest journey of my whole life." However, it was a journey worth taking.
"The biggest privilege of this was coming out with the insights that have made me understand what we need to do about this."
