Over sixty million Indians belong to communities imprisoned by the British as "criminals by birth." The Chhara of Ahmedabad, in Western India, are one of 198 such "Criminal Tribes." Declaring that they are "born actors," not "born criminals," a group of Chhara youth have turned to street theater in their fight against police brutality, corruption, and the stigma of criminality — a stigma internalized by their own grandparents. Please Don't Beat Me, Sir! follows the lives of these young actors and their families as they take their struggle to the streets, hoping their plays will spark a revolution.

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Shashwati Talukdar, Director/Producer/Editor, was educated in India and the US. She began her career as an assistant editor on one of Michael Moore's TV shows. She has worked for HBO, BBC, Lifetime, Sundance and Cablevision. Her films have screened at the Margaret Mead Festival, Berlin and the Whitney Biennial, among other venues.

P. Kerim Friedman, Director/Producer/Camera, is an assistant professor at National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan, where he teaches linguistic and visual anthropology. He is a founding member of the group anthropology blog Savage Minds and a documentary filmmaker.

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Please Don't Beat Me, Sir! had its world premiere at the 2011 Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) and was given the Society for Visual anthropology's prestigious Jean Rouch Award for Collaborative Filmmaking. It has also earned the Mahindra Creative Award for Social Change.

See the full list of screenings, including upcoming screenings.

Movie poster based on original artwork by Daisy Rockwell. Design by S. Ashraf Meer and Arsheya Rauf.

Please Don't Beat Me, Sir! is now available for purchase by institutions, non-profits, and individuals.

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