Salma

This groundbreaking film is a story of triumph over such unimaginable adversity that it will take your breath away. SALMA is a Tamil Muslim woman who was forced to leave school, then locked up by her family for 25 years. Through dogged persistence, she defied her village to become the most famous female poet in South India. Salma and her female relatives speak candidly with the filmmakers about their fates. When girls in this culture reach puberty, they lose contact with the outside world. Some hide their periods in an effort to stay free longer; at 14, Salma was shut up in a basement with bars on the windows. Forced to marry a village man who forbade her to write, she took bits of the calendar and wrote in the toilet. Her breakthrough came after she smuggled poems out with saris in the laundry. SALMA is a window onto the everyday injustices that sentence so many women. – B.B.