‘India regaining its democratic credentials will be true justice for Gauri,’ says Kavitha Lankesh  

Filmmaker Kavitha Lankesh on articulating her grief, becoming more vocal about politics, and taking her award-winning docu feature, Gauri, to the people

Kavitha Lankesh’s documentary feature, Gauri, on her slain journalist-activist sister Gauri Lankesh (who was assassinated outside her Bengaluru home in 2017), has won Best Human Rights film at the recent Toronto Women’s Film Festival, and is expected to be part of several international film festivals this season.

The film, supported by Free Press Unlimited and Reporters Without Borders, comes out even as the trial in Gauri’s case is underway, five years after her death. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) that probed the case has chargesheeted 18 accused, alleging that a gang of radical Hindutva elements primarily associated with Goa-based Hindutva organisations Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janajagruti Samiti killed her.

ALSO READ | Unravelling the Gauri Lankesh murder case

Kavitha spoke to the Magazine about the film and the way it is enriching her understanding of her sister and political activism. Edited excerpts:

I was very hesitant to do a film about Gauri; even my daughter suggested that I don’t. We were not sure whether I had the emotional bandwidth and courage to do it. But being a filmmaker, this was the best medium for me to articulate it to myself, too. The process of making Gauri was very emotional and cathartic. I cried behind the camera many times.

Ever since her death, I am discovering Gauri in more ways. The film, though narrated by me as a friend and sister, looks at her life and death in the context of the increasing attacks on the press and the rise of Hindu nationalism. There have been so many canards and misconceptions spread about Gauri after her death — that she was a Naxalite and so on. I wanted to clear many of these through the film and tell the world who she was. I hope people from all sides of the political divide will see the film and understand her better.

I was never a person who participated in protests and raised slogans on the steps of Town Hall like Gauri did. My politics were of a different kind. When I felt strongly about something and it haunted me, I made a film on it. For instance, I did the film Kariya Kanbitta on the atrocities on Dalits in 2013. But I was dragged into a different kind of political participation, thanks to the support that Gauri got after her assassination. If people had not turned up in her support and for the cause, her death would have been futile.