Netflix India film Skater Girl accused of depicting real-life story without due credits; director Manjari Makijani responds

Manjari Makijani ’s feature debut  _Skater Girl_  has found itself in troubling waters, days after release on Netflix India. Set in rural districts of Rajasthan, Skater Girl follows the life of 16-year-old Prena (Rachel Saanchita Gupta), who gets a taste of freedom with skateboarding. The catalyst is her discovery of Jessica (Amy Maghera), a British-Indian who is in the village on a personal quest. Moved by the enthusiasm of the village children to learn about skateboarding and keen on changing their lives, Jessica and friend Erick (Jonathan Readwin) decide to build a skate park and help kids foster their new passion. However, it has now come to the fore that Skater Girl is actually based on the life of a tribal girl Asha Gond from Janwaar in Panna, Madhya Pradesh, and Ulrike Reinhard, a German national, who set up the Janwaar Castle skatepark there in March 2015 that changed lives, reports Gaon Connection. While the filmmakers say it is a fictionalized account of stories of skateboarding girls in India, Gond claims it is her story and that the makers never got her permission — even though they met her. Read the post here

As reported by Mid-Day, Reinhard said she had connected to filmmakers via Skype calls and also had in-person meetings with the producer and director in Janwaar and Jaipur. She adds that she also had a contract to work with them as a research consultant on Skater Girl, but left it because while they had promised to work as co-creators; they were not interested in highlighting her and Gond’s process. Manjari, who has co-written and produced the film along with her sister Vinati, said this claim is baseless since this is not a biopic. “The film is about the impact of skateboarding, and not based on any one person. It is inspired by the stories of hundreds of girls and skaters we met across India during our research,” she told Gaon Connection. Reinhard and Janwar’s skatepark do get a ’thank you’ in the end credits of the film. But Reinhard wishes the filmmakers should have drwan a contract with Gond and the other children. The director later told NPR that Gond and the other Janwar children were given a chance to be a part of the movie’s climax scene, but they declined.