On the Road: Khushi's Story
2015 · 7m · India
Directed by Elizabeth Daube
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Khushi Prajapati faces unwanted, early marriage as a way for her family to cope with poverty.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A straightforward coming-of-age doc about a girl on the road—exactly the kind of earnest, well-meaning project that makes me want to scream. There's nothing here that questions the form, subverts the genre, or makes me reconsider what documentary can do.
Daube demonstrates a sensitive command of observational pacing and the tender space between intimacy and distance; the film sits comfortably in a lineage of intimate portraiture that values restraint and earned emotional clarity.
The decision to let silence and Khushi's own reflective pauses carry the weight instead of overlaying the expected coming-of-age score or voiceover narration is what makes this seven minutes feel expansive—it's the choice to trust emptiness that transforms a small budget documentary into something that breathes.
Reviews
Khushi Prajapati faces unwanted, early marriage as a way for her family to cope with poverty. To escape this unwanted destiny, she seeks assistance from The Azad Foundation's Women on Wheels program that trains women to become taxi drivers and earn money.