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MetFilm Sales has picked up worldwide rights to “Marriage Cops,” the feature documentary from directors Shashwati Talukdar and Cheryl Hess set to world premiere at this year’s Hot Docs festival in Canada. The filmmakers have unveiled the first clip from the documentary.
The Hindi-language doc, a co-production between India and the U.S., follows Sub-Inspectors Sandhya and Krishna, two dedicated career police officers who work at the Women’s Helpline in Dehradun, India, where they mediate marriage disputes that involve everything from abusive spouses and deadbeat dads to cheating wives and interfering mothers-in-law.
The film explores the complex role of law enforcement in the personal lives of citizens, employing a vérité approach to capture the contradictions and power struggles within domestic relationships.
“What we discovered was far more complex than we expected,” said directors Talukdar and Hess. “The police, despite being an arm of the state, often feel powerless when enforcing an institution where entire families and communities have a stake. There are no pure villains or pure victims in this story – just people trying to navigate a system that both empowers and constrains them.”
Talukdar, who was born and raised in India, previously worked as an assistant editor for Michael Moore and on projects for HBO, BBC, Lifetime, Sundance, and Cablevision. Her films have screened internationally at festivals including Busan and the Whitney Biennial.
Hess, an award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer from Philadelphia, recently won best director (short) at Atlanta Docufest for “She Got Balls!” and served as co-DoP on Ufuoma Essi’s “Is My Living in Vain?,” which received a Silver Bear at the Chicago International Film Festival.
The documentary was produced by Diana Chiawen Lee, whose credits include “The Catch,” which won Grand Prize, Best Doc, and Best Cinematography at the 2021 Taipei Film Awards.
MetFilm Sales, part of the MetFilm Group’s vertically integrated studio operation, offers producers full-service representation from packaging and finance to festival strategy and worldwide sales. Their current slate includes Brendan Kramer’s “Holding Liat,” which won the Documentary Award at Berlinale, Michael Premo’s “Homegrown,” which premiered at Venice, Gar O’Rourke’s “Sanatorium,” and Ross Whitaker’s “Beat the Lotto.”
Watch the clip here:
