Marriage Cops is an interesting insight into relationship culture in India and we were lucky enough to have a chat with Director Cheryl Hess about the process she, and co-director Shashwati Talukdar, had in making this film.
This was one of the many films from across the world that we got to see as part of the Galway Film Fleadh during Ireland’s hottest weekend of the year. Some of the other films seen included Khartoum, a film that started as a poem to the capital city of Sudan, but quickly became a heart-wrenching documentary exploring the former and current lives of five citizens of Khartoum, with the backdrop of the Sudanese civil war. This movie uses green screen to evoke a wide range of emotions as the refugees act out their happiest moments- and their most fearful.
On the other side of the tonal spectrum was The Cowboy (El Vaquero). An uplifting, meditative journey into what it means to pursue happiness in your life. Bernicia does odd jobs and works the ticket kiosk at a national park. One day she finds a lost horse and slowly assumes a new persona as a woman of the wild; the cowboy. While her family is confused and questions her choice, Bernicia gains understanding and solace in her new life.
Welded Together follows the young welder Katya. Abandoned as a little girl, we watch her try to reunite with her mother and weld together her family. At times, this feels hopeless, but Katya’s love for her baby half-sister keeps her from giving up.
The documentaries shown at the Fleadh came in all mediums, including animation such as Rock Bottom. A psychedelic musical animation based on Robert Wyatt’s album of the same name. It follows the tumultuous love story of an artist couple in the 70s as their perfect summer is shaken and stirred through a dreamlike, drug induced journey. This film uses experimental visuals and a mix of different media to draw the audience into the post-hippie scene.
This also includes a story told via found footage such as Do Painters Die Elsewhere (Dir. Michał Pietrak). This is a non-traditional biography of Polish painter Bolesław Gasiński, or Bolko. Rather than the usual documentary format of talking head interviews and a detailed chronology, we see Bolko’s life and love through the eyes of Bolko. Most footage in this film was taken by Bolko himself, and found in his home after his death. This gives the audience a very unique insight on the painter that couldn’t have been seen without this documentary.
Amongst this strong line up was the aforementioned Marriage Cops. Taking place over a year or so, this documentary follows several couples and women who come to India’s women’s helpline, a department of the police, to try and find peace and solution in their tumultuous marriages.
Hess described this helpline, and overall thesis statement of their film, as a “weapon of the weak”. Though this part of living can be quite foreign depending on where you are from, Hess emphasises the power that it gives to people, particularly women, who may be stuck in difficult living situations.
“As a documentary filmmaker you also have to learn with an open mind, in a different perspective, because it’s easy say ‘the police don’t do anything so why does this exist?’ But then you have to put yourself in the perspective of the people who are there. So, if your baby needs formula or medicine and the husband is not providing that for you, and you can’t work because you have small children at home, but there is a place where you can go and the police will threaten your husband with jail or getting his family involved, then you take it. Your immediate needs are getting met. Does this solve the global problem of the oppression of women? No. But I come from the US where they just kept a woman on life support to give birth… The state is in our bedrooms, it’s in our bodies. That’s just something that happens all over the world it’s just in what flavour does it happen. And it’s been happening for millennia, has it gotten better? Sure. Can it still get better? Yeah!”
“It was so rich, you have gender relations. A film that’s about work, a workplace … I think in the West, Indian marriage is a thing, there are shows about Indian marriage, Indian matchmaker and everybody thinks they understand what Indian marriage is even if they’re not of the culture. It’s so much more nuanced. I knew love marriage and I knew arranged marriage but there’s this sort of third category that’s love arranged marriage which is basically you fall in love with someone and get both families to approve of it so that’s sort of this hybrid category… do arranged marriages have more problems then regular marriage? Absolutely not, everybody has their issues. It wasn’t 99% arranged marriage, it was everyone.“
This film truly gave a very intimate insight into the personal lives of these couples who struggled with everything from miscommunications to domestic abuse. Hess also mentioned how people were very openly getting involved and offering up opinions into the lives of others.
“Marriage belongs to the extended family, but in some ways, it belongs to the extended public. We are the voyeurs; the audience are the voyeurs but it’s also the people in the office who are voyeuristic and in everyone’s business. “
We see shots of strangers peering through the windows during counselling sessions or listening in to the desk beside theirs. One shot has a woman giving her two cents to a man who is having difficulties with his wife. This is not a concept that is entirely foreign here. In Ireland, in particular, we’d be more used to a “behind your back” culture, rather than the blunt outrightedness shown on screen.
Though the content of this documentary could be humorous at times, it still had many challenging moments and themes. The more jarring parts included a look into poverty with mentions and accusations of selling babies. When asked if she was saddened by the outcome of the sessions, or if she was rooting for any particular side, Hess said that she felt that “…the outcomes for the couples in that film are probably the best outcomes for those couples.”
All films were seen as part of Galway Film Fleadh 2025
