About the Characters

Ruhi Singh

Miss India pageant contestant

Prachi Trivedi

Hindu nationalist youth leader

abira Merchant

Sabira Merchant

pageant advocate

Ruhi Singh's parents

Prachi Trivedi's parents

A fascinating study of the forces at work in a vast, complex country struggling to straddle modern and ancient values in the 21st century.

— The Christian Science Monitor

With extraordinary access, Pahuja illuminates extraordinary conflicts and contradictions facing modern girls.

— Alan Scherstuhl, The Village Voice

In Nisha Pahuja's brilliant documentary The World Before Her, the controversial politics of pageantry transcend borders...The documentary's India is one struggling to define its own relationship with the present and the past, and by extension its vision for the future.

— Matt BrennanIndieWire