Critics reviews

With so much to cover, the film sometimes seems overly hasty... Elsewhere, however, it finds time to return to particular points repeatedly, making sure that viewers won’t forget them... This is, of course, grim subject matter, but the film is powered throughout by the tremendous love within the family, and in its own way this is as important as the outcome of the prosecution.

To Kill a Tiger is about trauma and survival but also, discordantly, an extraordinarily beautiful film to look at... For all of the pain in the story, director Nisha Pahuja deals tenderly with the people in it and the place where it's set.

To Kill a Tiger is a heavy but necessary work about the legalese and cultural attitudes surrounding sexual violence in rural India... a powerful and risky example of the vitality of modern nonfiction filmed in South Asia... [It's a film that] fills the narrative gaps too often left by mainstream Indian fiction, while adopting — and in many ways, re-invigorating — the visual language of traditional drama.

“To Kill a Tiger” isn’t a stylish or particularly shapely documentary, and it occasionally drags... In a way, though, it’s fitting that the movie looks rather ordinary. What happened to Kiran, although horrific, is commonplace. What’s extraordinary about “To Kill a Tiger” is Kiran and Ranjit’s determination, and the possible changes for good that may result from it.

"To Kill a Tiger" tells an important story in a compelling manner that makes it worth watching, but its journey is so intense at times it might prove to be too much for some... [The film] is not an especially artful example of the documentary form, but this is not the kind of story that requires flashy visuals or a complex narrative structure. It tells its story clearly and directly.

A powerful, infuriating document of a family’s resilience in the face of massive communal pressure and to the notion that these types of small, necessary shifts can add up.

[To Kill a Tiger] makes a powerful case for social change — not merely with sticks and stones, but through the unyielding conviction of ideas and words.

“To Kill a Tiger” is a film bristling with invigorating defiance... Kiran and her family are heroes, but this isn’t a simple tale of heroism. The film lays bare the uneasy and inadequate avenues available to survivors seeking justice.

To Kill a Tiger upsets all manner of clichés about narratives of sexual assault and criminal justice... Pahuja’s film is a novelistic study of strength coexisting with self-doubt, of that inspirational byword, “perseverance”: a human frailty that endures.