Lisa Ray to lend voice in bandit queen documentary
Los Angeles: Canadian-Indian actress Lisa Ray is lending her voice to “Phoolan”, an upcoming live-action and animated documentary about Phoolan Devi.
The feature documentary, to be directed by Iranian-Canadian filmmaker Hossein Martin Fazeli, follows Devi from being born into a poor village family, sold off as a child bride and enduring multiple gang rapes, before responding by leading a bloody gang of male bandits as a female Robin Hood, reports hollywoodreporter.com.
Upon being captured, she was charged with many crimes and was imprisoned for 11 years. But the government ultimately dropped all charges and she was released.
Devi then ran for and won an election to the Parliament of India to champion the rights of lower-caste women, only to be assassinated in 2001 by an upper-caste man.
Lisa, as the main voice-over artist, will also executive produce the project, which depicts Devi as a sexual abuse victim.
“It’s a true honour to be involved in such an important documentary. Phoolan Devi is legendary in India and I couldn’t think of a better time in human history for her incredible life story to be retold,” Ray said in a statement.
Devi previously was the subject of the 1995 indie drama “Bandit Queen”, directed by Shekhar Kapur and starring Seema Biswas and Nirmal Pandey.
Fazeli has helmed three earlier women’s rights documentaries, including “The Tale of the Two Nazanins”, a film about an Iranian teenaged girl on death row and which launched an international campaign to save her life.