How Dehradun's 'Marriage Cops' Made It To The World's Biggest Documentary Festival
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An Indo-Canadian filmmaker duo's new documentary explores the unique efforts of Dehradun's all-women police helpline.
What happens when police officers double up as marriage counsellors? Well, in Dehradun, that's been happening for two whole decades and now, their unusual story is going global! Way back, Dehradun launched a special Women Helpline right inside a police station. Staffed with trained officers, the helpline quietly tackled everything from emergencies to marital disputes! Yep, instead of just arresting people, these cops also patched up feuding couples and sent them home (hopefully) a little more in love.
Now, this heartwarming service has been turned into a documentary called Marriage Cops. Directed by Dehradun's own Shashwati Talukdar and Philadelphia-based Cheryl Hess, the film dives into how the helpline became an unlikely centre for saving marriages.
Marriage Cops is all set to premiere at Hot Docs Festival in Canada this Sunday! FYI, Hot Docs is the world's biggest documentary festival.
Launched back in 2004, the Women's Helpline in Dehradun has been a lifeline for women stuck in rocky marriages. Every year, they handle over 1,000 cases with issues ranging from dowry troubles and property fights to cheating, abuse, and meddling in-laws.
Every Thursday, the police station turns into a counselling centre, with a team of women police officers, a psychologist, a lawyer, and a social activist all rolling up their sleeves to help. They sit down with couples, listen to both sides, and try to work some magic to bring them back together.
Most of the time, these counselling sessions are anything but calm. It's often a full-blown shouting match, with husbands and wives hurling accusations and digging up old promises gone wrong. But even through all the chaos, the helpline manages to give many women a chance to take back a little control, making their complicated lives just a little bit easier.
'What was compelling for us to explore was how ordinary people were using the police to solve their personal problems. Which is not how we are used to seeing the police or even thinking about them," says Talukdar. After the 2012 nationwide protests against the brutal gang-rape of a young student in Delhi, Talukdar and Hess felt a strong urge to explore the role of policing and its impact on violence against women and that's what eventually led them to this story.
At the time, the two filmmakers were brainstorming ideas for their next project together, years after first meeting at film school in Philadelphia. Talukdar had just wrapped up her first documentary, Please Don't Beat Me Sir, which told the story of the Chhara tribe in Ahmedabad, a community unfairly branded as criminals during British rule and later de-notified after India's independence. Meanwhile, Hess was busy working as a field producer and cameraperson for the ABC News series NYPD 24/7.
The Women Helpline wasn't something unique to Uttarakhand as several states had their own versions to support women stuck in abusive relationships. In fact, the very first women's helpline in India started in Tamil Nadu. Mumbai also had one, where an NGO teamed up with the police to tackle crimes against women. But what made Dehradun's helpline stand out was this: nowhere else were the police themselves stepping in to actually counsel couples.
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