Speakers
80 minutes | 2025 | Hindi with English subtitles
In a Dehradun police station, unhappy couples bring their marital troubles to an all-woman team of officers. Marriage Cops is an intimate observational documentary that follows three couples, from everyday domestic disputes to harrowing cases of violence and neglect, and the officers who mediate between them. What is the state doing in our bedrooms?
The film finds no clear villains and no pure victims. Those seeking help can exercise agency despite their dire circumstances, using the state’s power to their own advantage. The police, for all their authority, can feel powerless before an institution in which entire families and communities have a stake. Moments of heartbreak sit alongside warmth and humour, as the officers shift between enforcers and counsellors. The result is a nuanced portrait of a place where traditional marriage values meet emerging ideas of women’s rights.
In collaboration with:
Venue: Auditorium
Speakers
Shashwati Talukdar
Shashwati Talukdar was born and raised in India. She started her professional life in New York, where she worked as an editor on projects for HBO, BBC, Lifetime and the Sundance Channel. Her first feature documentary, Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!, premiered at the Busan International Film Festival. Her short work has screened at the Whitney Biennial, Kiasma Museum of Art in Helsinki, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. She is currently working as an independent producer between Taiwan and India.
Hansa Thapliyal
Hansa Thapliyal is a filmmaker, dollmaker, teacher and animator. Her recent works have concentrated on how worlds of the imagination can be entered with ordinary, everyday material. An important origin of these interests has been her work on Kamal Swaroop’s Phalke Project, a multidisciplinary project that imaginatively dives into the world of early cinema in India. Inspired by visits and collaborations arising from that work, she has since shifted her filmmaking practice: one film centres on two doll makers, another uses fabric to tell a story about case workers addressing domestic violence in Bundelkhand, and a third is a collaboration with Surabhi Theatre and Thakkar Adivasi Kala Aangan.
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