Driving with Selvi

Energetic, inspirational portrait of a former Indian child bride, who manages to escape and become an independent female taxi driver.

At present, there are more than 700 million women around the world who’ve been forced into arranged marriages before the age of 18. A third of these child brides come from India, and one of them is a taxi driver named Selvi. She was married off on her 14th birthday, and subsequently abused by her older husband. She was able to escape and then made a choice of life not common for women in India: she learned to drive a car, moved to the city and became the first female taxi driver in the south of the country. Driving with Selvi follows her over an extended period of time, during which she talks candidly about her life. How can you deal with a traumatic past full of rejection and violence? How can you make a new life with a social support network when your family no longer exists? The film shows the remarkable journey undertaken by a woman who swims against the tide, striving to break with the long tradition of arranged marriages for children. This is a tragic and poignant yet also energetic and inspirational portrait of an extremely tough Indian woman.