JEETI Pooni breathes out, shuts her eyes for just a second and bends down to speak to her daughters – the younger one perched on her older sister’s knee.
She is about to go into court to hear the verdict of an eight-year court battle she and her own two sisters embarked on back in 2006 seeking justice after they were raped and sexually abused by a male cousin as children. The middle daughter, she has led this fight, supporting her sisters. But right now her focus is firmly on her girls.
“I want you to know that there is no system, no person, that you can’t stand up against,” she says taking her youngest daughter’s hands in hers. She wants them to remember this day. “Like we’ve stood up,” she says, looking both in the eye. “I do hope this moment will help you realise you guys can stand up.”
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It’s an emotional moment in a powerful documentary – Because We Are Girls – directed by Baljit Sangra, which has its UK premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival next Wednesday at the Glasgow Film Theatre. It tells the story of a Punjabi Indo-Canadian family in Williams Lake, a small town in British Columbia, as they come to terms with a devastating truth that has been kept hidden for decades.
The film’s themes are dark and troubling at heart, its visual imagery focused on the snowy, barren landscapes of BC, where the family emigrated from India in 1973, when Jeeti was just five years old.
“Trouble” arrived on a plane from India, after the much celebrated arrival of their baby brother in 1980, when a 19-year-old cousin came to stay at their home – one of several distant relatives who made the journey from India. Jeeti was 11-years-old when she was raped for the first time. Images of Jeeti’s daughters – bare foot or sleeping in their beds reference the innocence stolen over many years.
But there are surprising moments of joy too. The film is infused with the Bollywood films that the sisters loved as children, and that became the backdrop to a rich imagery world that they could escape to. Their abuser is never named – a deliberate decision which puts the focus of the story on the sisters, and family dynamics rather than the man who has caused them so much suffering, says Jeeti.
It is a documentary that has been in progress for almost as long as the court case itself, an idea born shortly after Jeeti Pooni decided to speak to the whole family back in 2006 about the abuse she and her sisters had faced for so long.
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Both she and her younger sister Kira had tried to tell their mother back in the early nineties. But it was hushed up due to concerns about family honour and the need for the girls to marry well. And then in 2006 Kira showed Jeeti a picture of her abuser, now in his fifties, with an arm around a young girl. It made her realise that she had a duty to speak out to protect others, but also to set an example to her own daughters about the importance of standing up for justice.
The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of BC where the man was found guilty on four out of six charges of sexual assault in 2018. However, he challenged the ruling, arguing that the delayed sentencing was a violation of his rights, and charges will be dropped unless the Crown appeals.
Regardless of the final result, Jeeti – a designer turned motivational speaker – is driven by the need to tell her story. “The reason I wanted to make the film was I wanted to start this dialogue,” she told the Sunday National last week as she prepared to come to Glasgow to attend the Scottish screening. “I wanted to start breaking the silence around this. There is a grooming process that you go through as a child and it affected me so much until I started opening my mouth and talking about this.
“In our [Punjabi] culture we do not talk about it. But actually, this is also a universal story. That’s what we hear from the people that wait in line when we go to screenings. Speaking to people there has an impact all on its own, meeting with other survivors who see us as an inspiration. They come to see the film and they feel it is ok for them to break their silence.”
It charts a journey that has not been easy for the sisters and the impact not only of the abuse, but of the way their family initially tried to hush up what happened, has had devastating impacts.
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“It has driven each of us to suicide,” she admits. “That’s a point that my sisters and I all reached one by one. It’s had so much impact on the physical – mentally and emotionally and in the way our lives have unfolded.” But this is also a story of triumph, of three sisters who have been able to voice the truth and find their true strength.
It makes her reflect too on the other women speaking out across the globe on injustice. She is speaking in the week that producer Harvey Weinstein was convicted of committing a criminal sex act in the first degree involving one woman and rape in the third degree involving another.
“All these women globally are finding the courage and they are finally finding the courage to speak out,” she says. “Women are rising because many of them can no longer keep silent, and they are borrowing courage from each other. These girls who spoke up against Weinstein or against Bill Cosby or all the other men, they borrowed that courage from each other.
“That’s what happened with my older sister. She opened up when she heard it had happened to me and when I spoke up she spoke up too, to support me. It’s really profound. Really we want to inspire others, to show them we are just three ordinary women with regular jobs and lives.”
It’s also a film that’s helped her come to terms with the impact on her family. In one incredible scene her father admits over a family tea that he still finds it difficult to believe the girls are not in some way responsible. “That tea made me realise my parents are on their own journey,” says Jeeti. “It made me see them as if they were little kids with their own struggles. They are proud of us, of what we’ve done. I know they are proud because my dad now looks me in the eye.
“It’s in the way that he greets us.”
The film feels like part of their recovery. In its final scene the women dance together with their daughters, celebrating their resilience, bravery and fight for justice.
“It shows that despite all the trauma that is still there people can have healthy lives,” says Jeeti. They can dance, laugh, have parties. In the film we are not flawed despite all our horrific experiences. We are beautiful.”
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