Co-directors Cheryl Hess and Shashwati Talukdar examine a unique police division in India that mediates marital disputes in Marriage Cops. We posed our Qs à la mode to Cheryl and Shashwati, and here’s what they shared!
If we had to describe our film using only three adjectives, they would be: Intimate, insightful, nuanced.
We wanted to make this film because: We wanted to have a deeper understanding of how the state had become so involved in the most intimate of relationships — marriage. And beyond just being involved, trying to regulate it.
The thing that surprised us most while making our film was: How ordinary women, often with limited resources, were able to leverage the power of the state in order to find a solution for their domestic problems. We came to think of it as “weapons of the weak”; If you have very few ways to exercise agency, you use whatever tool is available to you. In this case the tool was the police.
Our favorite moment/scene/sequence in our film is: The scene where Officer Krishna tells one of the husbands that she is going to summon his mother if he doesn’t cooperate. When he refuses to give her the number, she calls the police chief in his precinct and asks him to obtain the information for her. It shows that the police women have real power… and the state has a long arm.
My most invaluable piece of doc-making equipment was/is:
Cheryl Hess: My camera!
Shashwati Talukdar: My phone. Constant communication was key to getting this film made.
Our must-have snack to get us through hours in the editing room is: Water and tea.
One piece of documentary-filmmaking advice we’d like to share with aspiring documentarians is: Develop a thick skin. Making a documentary can be a long and difficult process. There will be rejection along the way. You have to learn to not take it personally and just keep moving forward.
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