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Speaker 1: This is The Takeaway with Melissa Harris-Perry from WNYC and PRX, in collaboration with WGBH Radio in Boston.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: In India, there's just one newspaper run entirely by women. It covers the entire region of Uttar Pradesh. The unique outlet is the subject of Writing with Fire, an independent feature documentary. Over five years, the filmmakers followed a group of brave women journalists from marginalized communities, as the newspaper transitioned from print to digital, and as the reporters challenged the structures of tradition and power in their region of India. The film was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at this year's Academy Awards and has won several other awards on the Film Festival Circuit.

I spoke with Rintu Thomas, the co-director of Writing with Fire. I started off by asking how she discovered this story, decided to make the documentary.

Rintu Thomas: My co-director Sushmit and I, we saw a photo story online about the work of Khabar Lahirya, India's only newspaper that's run entirely by women and women from marginalized communities. The image in the photo story was very striking. It had a woman in a saree walking across the very, very arid landscape of central rural India. She had a newspaper in her hand, and she herself had reported, produced, and was now marketing the newspaper. That was unique because in this region, being a journalist was assumed to be the forte of dominant caste men.

The fact that Dalit women were running their own newspaper was just jumped out to us. When we met them, we realized that they were making a leap of faith by switching from 14 years of print to digital, which was really interesting because most women in the group had never even touched a smartphone. To have this kind of vision and gumption to see this through felt really interesting for us. Also, felt like the right moment for a film team to enter the story. This is way back in 2016. We made the film, it took us five years and here we are. It's called Writing with Fire.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You used the language of marginalized, women from marginalized communities, but it does feel perhaps even more intense than that. Can you talk a bit about where these women journalists fall within the caste system?

Rintu Thomas: India's caste system divides human beings into a pyramid structure where it's in ascending order of privilege and social acceptability. The Dalit community is so unwelcome that they're not even a part of this pyramid structure. Their presence is outside of it. Constitutionally, it is banned to practice casteism. As you can imagine, we've had this being practiced in subtle and severe ways across the country. Dalit women have born the highest brunt of this social oppression and cruelty.

For Dalit women to reclaim their voice, using the tool of journalism, building their own news organization, fronting stories that the mainstream wouldn't, is a revolution of no parallel.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I was struck also by the low-tech aspect of this. On the one hand, you point out that many of these women had not necessarily even interacted with a smartphone before but they're doing fairly extraordinary levels of journalism with very, I think, what many of us would think of as rudimentary tools here.

Rintu Thomas: I think the technology aspect of it, which is what they needed to learn, I really felt like no J-School could teach you that kind of the acumen, the interviewing skills, the powerful ways in which they knew how to negotiate. Especially in situations and with people who they had to agree to disagree with. That was a masterclass to watch. I think the fact that these women journalists belong to the very region from which they are reporting on, has a huge role to play. They're not coming as external journalists reporting on a story and leaving.

What affects a villager in a small part of the community affects them as well. They're building that sense of compassion, I think, and the sense of urgency in reporting on stories that would be really boring content for mainstream. Who really cares about a broken road going to a village, that might affect just 100 people? Khabar Lahirya journalists would look at it and go, what was the budget allocated for this particular road? How much has been spent? Why is it always broken? That critical feminist independent lens makes them very, very, I think, special.

That's why they have a lot of trust in the communities that they report from.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm so moved just by that description that you just offered. Who at the national level would care about a broken road? These three questions, that this is what journalists do, they ask those three questions. I'm also struck by your point that that sense of urgency, knowing what questions to ask and the willingness to go and ask them is related not to being absent from these communities. This documentary offers the possibility that is actually being embedded in community, being affected by that broken road, that creates the best journalism.

Rintu Thomas: Yes. Also, what is our lens? That's the larger question, I think, to the film that we're asking about the whole act of journalism and storytelling itself. There's a scene in the film when Neeta, one of the protagonists is having a conversation with Shyamkali who's very slow to take the technology, in fact, the slowest in the group. Both of them are talking about what an angle means, that was a very striking scene. We had forgotten about it after we shot it, then when we discovered it in the footage, years later, for me, it felt like the microcosm of the larger story.

What is my angle? What is the lens with which I'm looking at a story? Who can train me in that? Who is newsworthy and who determines that? A lot of our news production is transmission. How are we doing this in a way which is critical and yet, engaging based on facts? I think we got a masterclass [chuckles] in all of this, just staying with them for four long years, watching them move through spaces which are highly dominated by male presence and are aggressive. To maintain your calm, poise, and dignity and just showing up or landing up to do your job is what we wanted to imbue the film with.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's take a quick break. We'll be back with more on the documentary, Writing with Fire in just a moment.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: We're back with Rintu Thomas, co-director of Writing with Fire to feature documentary about an all-women-run newspaper in India. Before the break, we spoke about how these women are so-called, untouchables in India's caste system. Let's take a listen to a scene from the film. Just noting here, it is in Hindi.

Meera: [Hindi language]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Here, one of the main protagonists, Mira says that in her region, a journalist used to mean that you are an upperclassman, a Dalit woman journalist was unthinkable. Over the last 14 years, the newspaper has changed that perception. A Dalit woman journalist was unthinkable, but over the last 14 years, the newspaper has changed that perception. There are also several scenes in the film where these women journalists are speaking with victims who are being threatened themselves. I asked Rintu if she thought that these women were ever afraid while doing their reporting.

Rintu Thomas: In the film, we wanted to give a sense of the everydayness of violence. It's one thing to be, say, attacked when you go to do a story, but it's not a one-off incident which we want-- We didn't want to sensationalize a moment of violence. For us, the fact that one of the reporter's steps makes the decision to step out of her home to do a story. Maybe sometimes in the middle of the night or even in the broad daylight, anything can happen to her. Her making the decision of continuing to do that day in, day out is an act of courage, is an act of assertion, and is an informed choice.

In the way that they function now, Khabar Lahirya is in its 20th year, they've been very smart about how they've existed. They asked the right questions, but they know that they have to continue working in the same environment. They have allies within the system, within the administration, whose respect that they've won over the years. It's a combination of doing your job in a way which does not alienate the person you don't agree with.

Languaging it carefully, finding the courage to ask the right questions and also the courage to sometimes feel like to take a decision of, you know what? This is not my fight, I'm going to step away today and let the wind pass and then restrategize. We witnessed all of this. That's why we wanted to create an ambience of a danger within the film because everything that you do has very serious consequences. Yet you do because if you won't, then who will?

Melissa Harris-Perry: I feel like in so many ways you've already answered this, but I do want to ask it directly, what can we learn from these journalists?

Rintu Thomas: To believe. We live in a very fractured world. There's a lot of cynicism that creeps in, which we try to populate our world with people who think like us, talk like us, like the echo chamber. I think sometimes we forget that we need to believe. They believe in the goodness of speaking up, of standing up for somebody, believing in causes that are bigger than yourself. It's not some philosophical, metaphysical thing. It's every day. It's when you have nothing going for you, you take a decision and say, "You know what? My voice matters, and what I do say, don't say matters."

I think that has been the biggest impact that the film has had on audiences across the world where they watch it and say, "I'm inspired by Meera's resilience, by Suneeta's complete inobedience to power, by Shyamkali's fierce energy, a spirit within her very vulnerable demeanor. I am like one of them. I just feel like I can make a difference." If people walk away from the film with that, and that is the biggest reward that I feel of my five years of labor, we need to relearn to believe.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Do these journalists know about the Oscar nomination, and if so, how have they reacted?

Rintu Thomas: Oh yes, they do. We've always celebrated from the Sundance premiere to every word that the film has had, to now this. It's different from all of our everyday reality, theirs, ours. This is really the first Indian feature documentary to make the nomination. It's a brand-new experience for us, for the women. They are very excited. There's been a huge global spotlight on their work. Most of the biggest broadsheets in the world have written about their work, and in that way amplified their work. They're very excited.

It's very interesting to me that the day of the nomination was announced, I called Meera excitedly and I said, "Meera, we'll be nominated." We exchanged a moment of joy and then she was like, "Oh, you know what? I'm reporting. I'm on my election reporting duties. I'm going to go back to it." It's yin and yang, a lot changes. Yet, you go back to what you're doing and life carries on, I guess.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What are the stories you are working on telling now or hope to tell next?

Rintu Thomas: We are working on two separate, very different projects. Both of these stories, they're in sync with the larger teams that we're interested in, but very, very different from Writing With Fire. One is a story on children, and is an observational piece. One is the story of a little mango grower in a rural part of India. It's a story about family and love and togetherness in the face of climate crisis. Very different stories, but in spirit, in a continuum of our work.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Thank you so much, Rintu Thomas, co-director of the documentary Writing with Fire. Rintu, thank you for joining The Takeaway.

Rintu Thomas: Thank you so much for having me.

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