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Three brave Punjabi Canadian girls tell a story of childhood trauma through the film.

While South Asians are one of the largest minority groups in North America, and are frequently termed as a model minority, often in the process of assimilating into the new culture, they end up ignoring some bias and prejudices within their own community. Perhaps there is a reason why we do not hear many stories of depression, mental illnesses, coming out gay, or for that matter stories of child sexual abuse, emerging from within the community.

So when a documentary is based on the uncomfortable topic of women who suffered abuse as young girls in their own house by their own relative, there is bound to be unease and anxiety. But sometimes, this unease is important to know the gravity of the problem and to acknowledge the crime of skirting the issue.

Because We Are Girls, a documentary directed by Indian Canadian filmmaker Baljit Sangra, was screened in Vancity Theatre, Vancouver over the weekend. It tells the extraordinarily brave story of three Indo-Canadian sisters — Jeeti, Kira and Sulakshna Pooni — who share the traumatic story of their childhood when they were abused by an older cousin within their home. The women come together to share their stories and punish the culprit albeit decades later.

Sensitively handled by Sangra, the story talks about the three sisters, who grew up in Williams Lake, British Columbia. On the face of it, they had a perfect childhood where they laughed, danced, celebrated with their parents, but things changed when their parents sponsored an extended family back home to come and live with them in Canada.

An older male relative, their cousin, abused them. Each one of them suffered the anguish silently. In their typical strict and conservative Punjabi household, it was taboo to talk about “such things.” So the sisters carried the emotional turmoil silently, letting the predator get away with one of the most sinister crimes.

Until two and half decades later, when they chose to speak out against the man who continued his crime against other innocent victims. As is not shocking, the girls’ parents still do not comprehend the trauma, or the need to speak out.

Sangra, who has made documentaries such as Hockey United and Many Rivers Home, has always touched upon the subject of cultural assimilation or conflicts in her work.

With her latest work, she has opened a can of worms by talking about a topic that needs to be spoken about.