A Documentary Film Shows India's Tribal Women Living Horrors of Marginalisation

A critical gaze at witch-hunting in India—a mix of patriarchy & power control captured through a survivor's account.

Witch-hunting in India is patriarchy, power control and discrimination at play, a survivor's account narrates.

Image: Namita Chauhan/ The Quint

The human tragedy in Testimony of Ana is all too real, yet at times, it has a surreal bearing to it. The film narrates the tale of a witch-hunt survivor amidst the calmness of nature. Its beautiful shots of forests and lakes are contrasted by the harrowing trauma of Anaben.

Such is the reality of survivors of witch-hunting in India. An issue that is especially rampant in the states with significant tribal populations rarely gets highlighted in the mainstream.

This is a marginalisation so on the face and yet hidden away from the milieu of urban Indian discussions because the term 'Witch' in itself, is perceived as a superstitious concept. Yet, it is a glaring reality that amplifies the discrimination against individuals, especially women and tribals dwelling on the social fringes.

As Sachin Dheeraj, the director of this movie puts it, “People think it’s too silly to be taken too seriously in 21st-century India, and it’s really unfortunate. The term “Witch” is a façade under the layer of patriarchy. I think they just need to exert power over this other human who isn't as powerful as them.”

The Making Of 'Testimony Of Ana'

Sachin completed his bachelors in India before moving to the United States for higher education where he switched to 'Film Studies'. His documentary Testimony of Ana (2021) is remarkable because it allows the survivor to take over the narrative. As one explores it further, it can be found perhaps, how the film captures its own creative process.

It has won several accolades, including the award for the best non-feature film in the 68th National Film Awards and the top prize at the International Documentary & Short Film Festival of Kerala— an Oscar-qualifying film festival.

The author sat down with the director to discuss what went behind this project, the artistic elements involved, and his vision for the film

You stated that this was your second-year pre-thesis project at the University of Texas, Austin. Where did this idea germinate?

Back when I was studying in Gujarat, there was a lot of noise around the issue of witch-hunting. I read a case where an elderly woman was beaten up because she was accused of feeding on cattle or children’s souls. I got very curious about why these things happened. Seven-eight years down the line, I was at film school and had to make a pre-thesis film. I badly wanted to make something about India.

Reading about Mission Birubala named after Birubala Rahba, a crusader against witch-hunting in Assam, reignited my curiosity. I started digging deep, and there were many cases that were happening in Gujarat. I contacted some NGOs and through them, lawyers and journalists to mine more info.

During my fieldwork, I was initially supposed to meet a couple who had been assaulted after being branded as witches. Now you need to realise that many of these point people live quite far away and, so they don’t visit these villages often. To our utter shock, we learnt that the said couple had actually passed away succumbing to the injuries inflicted by attacks on them. But then after a bit of a search, I met Anaben Pawar— a prominent victim of the witch-hunt.

After listening to her horrific account, I felt compelled to tell her story whilst retaining her powerful voice and conviction. And that's how the film came to be.

Did you face linguistic barriers while covering these subjects? If yes, how did you overcome it for the project?

One good thing is that our sources recommended we not pose as outsiders once we enter the village. We'd usually be accompanied by a local help who was a frequent visitor on these field trips and was very much well-known in these tribal villages. Fun fact, we also roped him in as one of our production assistants.

Much of the communication with Anaben happened in silence. The film reflects the Observational Verité genre. She was talking, and we were just passive spectators documenting from a distance apart from a couple of occasions when we intervened for specific queries.

An Empathetic Treatment in Storytelling

There were moments in the film where the interviewee seemed reluctant or disinterested to divulge details from the past. Taking cues from Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom here, movie-making is inherently a voyeuristic activity in which you're peeking into someone’s life. How did you manage to let the entire conversation visibly uncomfortable, flow?

The whole idea behind including these repressed moments and conversations in the film was driven by the need for transparency and unsaid power dynamics that play out between the observer and the collaborator. Anaben was steering the whole filming process forward. Only when she was in the mood to talk or express herself would we take our cameras out and shoot.

The post-edits could have those bits removed but then making a 'clean' film was far from what I had envisioned. That it captures those nuances in human interaction, enhances my respect for the medium.

And even if you observe how she kept addressing us as the film progresses, was mostly edited in chronological order, keeping the timeline of sequences intact as told. Initially sceptical of our motive behind capturing her story when justice was a far cry, she eventually warmed up and we managed to gain her trust which made preserving the integrity of her narration even more integral.

Nature features to be a recurrent element with beautiful shots, 'touristy' at first but brings her subsistence in focus on a closer look, as the film progresses. Such as the eerily haunting shot of an inverted lake seems reflective of Anaben's life flipped upside down with all the witch-calling and indignities she faced. What guided such a cinematic vision?

One of the most important choices for us was to document the nature surrounding her. As she is an Adivasi woman, her lifestyle is deeply connected and rooted in nature. We always knew that it was going to play a significant role in the film but didn’t know how or what form it would take while shooting it. The decision to juxtapose her voice against natural elements was taken while editing.

With respect to the inversion shot, even before that, you’d see that there’s a well. A sudden disturbance came in the form of a stone. Whatever was disturbed, tries to come back to the original form, but you’d see that there’s a void. And this was perhaps the only sequence that we tried to “create” in the movie. We wanted to tell the whole film in these two shots. Once there is a disturbance, once a thing breaks, there’s no way you can piece it together into its original form. It started with a fetish for abstraction that slowly into the world of Ana.

The cinematic choice of inverted lake is telling of the survivor's life turned upside down

Still from Testimony Of Ana/ MUBI

Testimony of Ana is a story of trauma but it's also about a survivor moving on with her life. There’s also a bit of hope and pain as the sequence of Anaben with her granddaughter is shown to us. What was the film's message?

True, trauma and memories were associated with the event but one could also feel a strong resistance to oppression, and patriarchy, and Ana epitomised it perfectly. As a filmmaker, it was important for me to show how she stood her ground firm even amidst hardships and became a beacon of hope for future generations. It was her struggle for dignity that became the main highlight.

That sequence (with the granddaughter) re-emphasises how human she is. Just to experience that love for her child makes one question the narrative that’s spun against her: Is this the person whom you would accuse of being a witch?

(Divy Tripathi is an Independent Journalist and Writer. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for his reported views.)