To address the issue of child marriages in India, Oscar winner Guneet Monga and producer Ashvini Yardi have collaborated with the She Leads Impact Fund on the documentary 'Kicking Balls'. Directed by Vijayeta Kumar, the documentary explores how a not-for-profit organization is working in three Rajasthan villages to make their girls independent and combat child marriage through football.
"Each year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18. That's 23 girls every minute. 'Kicking Balls' became a project that we knew could not just be a film; it had to be a conversation. After screening it in several schools across India, I was always asked what more I could do to help these young girls," IANS quoted Monga as saying.
"We're storytellers, meant to reflect what we see at the grassroots -- our effort is to tell stories that ignite conversations and spark change in the policies of the country," Monga said, adding that she wishes to collaborate to engage one million women in areas where child marriage and gender inequality are highly prevalent in India.
A special film screening was recently hosted in New Delhi, attracting impact investors and drawing attention to the urgent need for strengthened national and state-level policies to eliminate child marriage by 2030. To support this mission, the She Leads Impact Fund is providing $25,000 in funding to bring transformative change to the lives of women married as children.
Monga won her second Academy Award last year for the documentary 'The Elephant Whisperers', depicting an unbreakable bond between two abandoned elephants and their caretakers. In 2019, her film, 'Period. End of Sentence', bagged the Oscar in the Documentary Short Subject.
