A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness

The Girl in the River - for me - is a film about the miracle, first and foremost. Because not everybody who can survive after gunshot in the face, and bag over head, and drowning. The young woman survived. And yet. The film shows forgiveness under pressure from the surrounding society. Not natural forgiveness. The troubled society shown in the film was simply trying to find balance. That's all. That's why the girl was pressured to forgive her father. Nothing changed inside the people. The situation didn't teach them anything. But I hope this film will teach us something. After watching the film, I looked for information about what happened to Saba and her husband 10 years after the filming of the film. I want to believe that they are doing well.

A GIRL IN THE RIVER THE PRICE OF FORGIVENESS

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy born in November 12, 1978) is a Canadian-Pakistani journalist, filmmaker and polbornitical activist known for her work in films that highlight gender inequality against women. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won the Oscar for Short Documentary in 2012 for Saving Face. She's nominated again this year for A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness. Both films tell the stories of Pakistani women mutilated or killed by radical moralists, and highlight the people around them fighting for societal progress.

It's a cliché to say that cinema has the power to change the world, but the reason it's become such a well-worn phrase is because films like Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness exist to make it happen and influence lawmakers at the highest level.

The filmmaker won her second Academy Award in the 'Best Documentary Short' category for the 40 Minute profile piece that premiered on HBO, and it ended up instigating similar change to her first winner, Saving Face, a haunting story centred on acid attacks made against women in Pakistan.

A Girl in the River follows Saba, a Year-old who survives an honour killing attempt made by her father and uncle after she defied their express wishes to elope with her husband. She was shot in the head, placed in a sack, and then dumped in the river, but miraculously managed to escape her near-fatal predicament and make her way to a local hospital, beginning a fight for justice that faced an uphill struggle to alter the traditional way of thinking in local society.

As Obaid-Chinoy explained to the International Documentary Association, her second Oscar-winning documentary reached all the way to the corridors of power, with the Pakistani prime minister vowing to make changes to the nation's existing legislation as it pertained to honour killings, driven largely by the impact of A Girl in the River.

Review written by artist jayakumar jrain.

From my home in New Orleans I watched this documentary through teary eyes, anger, fear, helplessness, and hopeful that this woman's story will touch each and every person that watches it. Her bravery and will-to-live is very empowering. Eventhough I wished the laws in her country would've protected her more and others that will find themselves in this particular situation. She is still a hero in my eyes. I pray for her protection and many blessings to Saba and her husband and to their bundle of joy.

A country that is so strict with religion has such a loose and imperfect legal system. Such a comparison is to make people understand that the system, religion, is nothing more than a pretext for maintaining their reasonable and unequal treatment of others.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won an Oscar for her documentary "Saving Face", about victims of acid attacks. Her documentary "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" looks at so-called honor killings (the murder of a family member who is perceived to have brought shame upon the family). In this case, a girl hooked up with a man of whom her family disapproved, so they tried to kill her but she survived and filed charges against her attackers. The question then becomes whether or not she can forgive her attackers.

I don't know how long honor killings have been going on. I suspect that every fundamentalist from every religion would do this sort of thing if given the chance. Whatever the case, it's an outstanding documentary drawing attention to a too often ignored problem. It deserved its Oscar win, and I hope that Obaid-Chinoy continues making these sorts of documentaries.