In 2019, soon after Canadian filmmaker Richie Mehta finished working on the acclaimed series ‘Delhi Crime’, he was approached by Namah Pictures, which had acquired the rights to the brigand Phoolan Devi’s autobiography, ‘I, Phoolan: The Autobiography of India’s Bandit Queen’. The producers wanted to retell her story in a modern context, and although the writer-director was initially hesitant because he is “a non-resident Indian, Punjabi and a male filmmaker”, he changed his mind after reading the book.

“Phoolan Devi’s story goes on to show how she empowered herself from nothing. I thought maybe it was time for the world to see this crucial story,” Mehta, who made his feature debut with the 2007 movie ‘Amal’, says.

Instead of telling her entire life story, he chose to focus on a specific moment in her life — the chapter that recounts how 2,000-armed men were deployed to capture the then 17-year-old Phoolan in a siege that lasted 48 hours. That siege, the murder of her partner, and the subsequent gangrape forged her identity as the bandit queen.

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Directed by Mehta, ‘Phoolan’, which tells the story of the siege, had its world premiere in the Special Presentation category of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Friday.

“It’s [the incident] described matter-of-factly in her book, just one of the many adversities she faced. This became a way (for him) to effectively convey to the world the odds against her,” he says.

“Phoolan Devi’s story goes on to show how she empowered herself from nothing. I thought maybe it was time for the world to see this crucial story,” Mehta, who made his feature debut with the 2007 movie ‘Amal’, says.

Phoolan Devi was born in 1963 in Ghura Ka Purwa, a small village in Uttar Pradesh. She would eventually go on to become a bandit in the Chambal Valley — and one of India’s most compelling figures.

In 1983, she surrendered to authorities and served 11 years in prison. Following her release in 1994, she entered public life and was elected twice as a Member of Parliament from Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh. She was assassinated on July 25, 2001, outside her residence in New Delhi.

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While retelling Phoolan Devi’s story on screen, Mehta was careful about the protagonist’s agency. “It’s important that we didn’t present Phoolan as a victim. She was an empowered agent of change. The fact remains that she was able to become that in the face of adversity,” says Mehta.

The book gave him a clear understanding of how Phoolan Devi viewed her own life and interpreted the events she lived through. “I used her words as my foundation— nothing more, nothing less,” says Mehta. “There are themes she returned to repeatedly in her writing, and those became my focus. The crucial one being the intersection of poverty and gender, and how that shaped the circumstances of her life. I tried to frame the film through that lens, staying faithful to what she herself identified as the central reality of her experience.”

For the filmmaker, this was critical, especially since “cultural and gender regression” has not gone away. He refers to the 2012 Delhi gangrape — an incident that shook the nation’s conscience. Season 1 of ‘Delhi Crime’ is based on the incident.

“We are in a situation where things didn’t get better after 2012 in reality,” he says.

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From a cinematic standpoint, he believes the story of Phoolan Devi shows combat that occurred over gender issues. “This was unheard of. It’s important to acknowledge that we’re witnessing gruesome, class-based violence all over the world, all the time.”

The film was shot in the Chambal region, where Mehta spent considerable time with locals before filming began. “It’s important that we acknowledge different points of view,” he says. “At the same time, this film is very much about the lived experience of a 17-year-old girl.”

The movie ‘Phoolan’ was shot over three months. Mehta describes it as “the most physically gruelling shoot” of his life.

“It is very taxing since the landscape is unforgiving. It was very hot. Apart from that, it is difficult to reach there. It was tough to bring the resources required for filming and creating the scale of what we were aiming for,” he says. “However, it helped that the team believed it was a story worth telling.”

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Mehta is no stranger to dark themes, as ‘Delhi Crime’ and the 2024 Malayalam-drama series ‘Poachers’ show. Despite this, he’s constantly looking for hope in the world. “The only way for me to reconcile with all the terribleness around us is to find stories of perseverance and light,” he says.