Rintu Thomas is an independent documentary director-producer based in New Delhi, India. She is a 2018 Sundance Institute, Bertha Foundation Fellow, and a 2019 Sundance Stories of Change Fellow. A recipient of numerous awards, including the President’s Medal in India, Thomas is the cofounder of Black Ticket Films, a production company invested in the power of non-fiction storytelling and social justice stories.

“Writing with Fire” is screening at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which is taking place online and in person via Satellite Screens January 28-February 3. This film is co-directed by Sushmit Ghosh.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

RT: In the heartland of India is a newspaper run entirely by semi-literate Dalit (low caste) women, reporting on stories missing from mainstream media, which is mostly dominated by men. Working in media-dark villages, mocked and discouraged by every force of patriarchy, they are ushering in a silent revolution by being the country’s only newspaper run by women.

In their sixteenth year, their newspaper, Khabar Lahariya (Waves of News) makes a transition from print to digital. “Writing with Fire” meets them at this critical cusp and follows chief reporter Meera as she leads the growth of this unusual media force. With intimate access to the personal and professional worlds of Meera and her journalists, “Writing with Fire” tells a story that is as unique as it is universal.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

RT: In 2016 when we met our characters, I was drawn to the coming together of two unique forces – on one hand are the rural Dalit women who are chipping away at one of the cruelest systemic discriminations in the world that are created to silence them, and on the other hand is digital technology that by its very nature is unfettered. I was most interested in exploring what happens when women reclaim the spaces that are designed to exclude them. What does the world that they reimagine look like?

The main characters in the film are three women with very different personalities and personal histories. They are united in their vision for a more just world through their journalism, but they approach it with their own unique lens, voice – and chutzpah!

Moreover, in our popular culture, we are not used to seeing Dalit women. whose caste is designated as “untouchable,” in positions of power — as leaders, colleagues, risk-takers, and bosses. In taking an intimate, observational approach to our process of filming, I knew I had the opportunity to locate the story in this rare, dynamic space that the world has not experienced so far.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

RT: In the early shooting schedules for the film, we followed our central protagonist Meera to the sets of an interview-based show on a mainstream media channel that was profiling Khabar Lahariya’s work.

Backstage, one of the crew members asked her, “You come from a place where simply stepping out of home needs women to wear a veil and ask for permission. how did you get the permission to do what you are doing?”

Meera smiled and said, “Sometimes, permissions are not sought. They are simply taken. It hasn’t been easy, but I didn’t allow myself to choose the opposite.”

To the audience of this film, I hope they are affirmed that another world of possibilities exists, if we only allow ourselves to reimagine.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

RT: The film is set in the state of Uttar Pradesh, which is a deeply fraught landscape – caste discrimination, violence against women, and political corruption seep into each other, and this matrix dictates everyday life. The biggest challenge was in filming with our characters, who were mostly working in extremely hostile spaces – reporting from illegal mines run by powerful mafia, in police stations where rolling a camera is almost impossible, in meetings with politicians who are reluctant to be questioned by women with a camera.

We were also filming in spaces of deep grief – homes of rape survivors, families of murder victims, and survivors of domestic violence.

We knew we had to have a quiet presence, with equipment that was almost invisible so that we didn’t interrupt the work of our characters and also maintained the sanctity of the moments that were unfolding between them and the people they were interacting with.

We decided to strip down the crew to three – myself, my co-director and cinematographer Sushmit Ghosh, and our second cinematographer, Karan Thapliyal. We decided to let go of filming with our usual camera of choice, the FS7, and stripped down the film kit to two DSLRs, prime lenses, and a zoom lens. The sound equipment had to be compact too, as we couldn’t call attention to ourselves with boom rods, so all location sound recording had to be done by me on RF mics and a H6 zoom recorder.

This initially felt like a less-than-ideal way of working, but as we filmed in Uttar Pradesh through its hot summers, monsoons, and bitter winters, jostling for space on rickety buses and overcrowded rickshaws, walking hours every day under the baking sun to get to villages that didn’t exist on maps, we chose to make the most of this arsenal.

We developed a discreet sign-language as we shifted fluidly between angles and characters and lenses, both in the chaos and deep silences of the area. We innovated and multi-tasked to create a cinematic landscape that is very, very close to how we had imagined it from the outset.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

RT: In finding support for the film, we were ambitious because we believed right from the start that this story has the power to resonate with a global audience. India has no culture of state, institutional, or private foundation support for non-fiction, so we had to build our funding from the more evolved structures of support that exist outside the country, of course these are highly competitive institutions too! In building support for the film, we focused on two aspects: pitching the film at the right spaces/forums and curating relationships of trust.

“Writing with Fire” is the first Indian documentary that is directed and produced entirely by an Indian team, which has received support from both North America (Sundance, Chicken & Egg, Tribeca, Doc Society, SFFILM) and Europe (Finnish Film Foundation, Sorfond/Norway, IDFA) in equal force.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

RT: After I studied literature in college, my love for writing led me to a Masters in Mass Communication from Jamia Millia University in Delhi. In the two years I spent at the institute, I fell in love with the art of writing with visuals. My knowledge of films so far was limited to mainstream Bollywood that I would voraciously consume on cable television.

Experiencing for the first time the language and grammar of world cinema, interacting with fellow classmates from almost all of the 26 states of India, and living on my own made me discover things about myself that I had never tapped into. By the end of these two wonderful years, I was confident about the technical skills I had learned to take off and create my own artistic voice.

During my Masters final thesis, I had to co-direct a documentary with three other classmates. The film, “Flying Inside My Body,” is the story of Sunil Gupta, a photographer who uses his nude body as a site of protest in challenging society’s perceptions about his gay, HIV+ identity. This film traveled to film festivals across the world, won awards, was used as a resource tool to curate panels and discussions, and got included as a part of gender studies courses in two universities.

I come from a fairly traditional Christian family where conversations around gender and sexuality had been limited to straitjacket lessons from Sunday school. When I showed “Flying Inside My Body” to my parents, it was the first time as a family we discussed homosexuality in the context of accepting and respecting people as they are.

I believe that stories alone may not change the world, but people do, and stories change people by motivating them to think and act in new ways. This was a powerful moment for me and prompted me to decide that this is how I’d like to spend the rest of my work life.

One of the classmates on this film with me was Ghosh. We were great friends, discovered we had a comfortable working relationship, and shared the love for non-fiction, so in 2009 we started our own film production agency and called it Black Ticket Films.

In the past 11 years, we have been acknowledged for creating a new visual language for non-fiction in India, we were the youngest recipients of the President’s Medal, the highest award for artists in India, and our shorts have won numerous awards. Most importantly, our films are being used as tools of advocacy in a wide array of educational and cultural spaces across the world. “Writing with Fire” is Black Ticket Films’ first feature documentary.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

RT: Best advice: We are a bit shy as people and felt very confused about how to approach people after we’ve met them at a festival or a pitching forum. The best advice we got is that after a meeting, always follow up with an email. And thereafter, keep your potential supporters and partners abreast with updates from the film, your process, anything exciting that’s shaping up. Keep it short but interesting and do this whenever you feel is the right time to share an update. People might not respond, but everyone’s reading their emails, and I’ve realized this is a great way of staying in touch, furthering conversations.

Worst advice; For the title of the film, we were told to go with something that starts with the first ten to 15 characters in the English alphabet so that in a festival catalogue, we’d be up there in the titles. I don’t agree. I think if a story is strong, it will find its audience even if the title starts with a W!

W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?

RT: Always ask questions, unabashedly. Do not assume that the other person in the conversation knows more or better than you and that asking would mean you know less. So many of us are directing, producing, and editing our own films, and each of these processes involves a wide array of right decisions to be made at the right time.

Having a clear understanding on the choices we need to make is an absolute must and it starts with asking questions.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

RT: Mira Nair’s “Salaam Bombay!” It follows the story of the lives of children living on the streets of Bombay — their joys and sorrows. I love Mira’s intimate and immersive lens that respects her characters in all their complexities. She casts non-actors, shoots on location in the chaotic red light district in Kamathipura, Bombay, and creates a world that is seamlessly dark and delicate.

The film and its performances and images have stayed with me from the time I first watched it many years back.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?

RT: I was editing “Writing with Fire” when the lockdowns began dictating the rhythm of our lives. I’m a compulsive planner, so the chaos of uncertainty threw me off! My biggest learning in adjusting to this different way of life is a kind of surrender: giving in without giving up. I’ve always enjoyed multi-tasking, so I’ve employed that in managing the different aspects of my personal and professional life.

The biggest personal surprise has been how I’ve been picked up the basics of knitting. I’ve never found in me the quality to be still and work with my hands, this new creative experience has been very enabling. Some colorful scarves and mufflers stand testimony to this!

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?

RT: This is the important conversation we need to be having everywhere. I think we need a diverse team of professionals in decision-making roles. This could prelude the culture of stereotyping communities that are non-white and change that with one where there is absolutely no simplification in the film of its subtext or cultural context.