Bandit Queen (1994, India)

This biodrama (in Hindi with subtitles) told the true-life legendary story of indomitable female folk outlaw-heroine Phoolan Devi (portrayed by Seema Biswas). It was based upon Devi's "dictated prison diaries," made after she was arrested, in real life, in 1983, and imprisoned for eleven years. [She ran for Parliament in 1996 and was assassinated in 2001 when she was just 37, reportedly to avenge the Behmai Massacre.]
It portrayed many scenes of her continued rape and sexual humiliation in her society. As a lower-caste Indian girl, she was married off at age 11 (Sunita Bhatt), and repeatedly 'raped' and ill-treated by her husband. After she left her husband (and was now regarded as a loose woman and fair game), she became defiant against forced female subservience, which led to her banishment as a social outcast from her patriarchal-based village.
After being arrested (framed for a robbery), raped, and beaten in prison, she was kidnapped by a local gang of bandits and again, raped, but won the respect and love of the gang's temporary leader Vikram Mallah (Nirmal Pandey), who became her lover and eventually made her co-leader (with resemblances to Bonnie and Clyde and Robin Hood tales). When jealous upper-caste Thakurs returned to rule the bandits in the village, they killed Mallah, gang-raped Devi (for three-days), and forced her to walk naked through the village's main streets to fetch water from the well. Her retaliatory vengeance took the form of a brutal massacre that killed 20 upper caste men in Behmai (in Uttar Pradesh) where she was assaulted. Her last defiant words in the film were: "I am Phoolan Devi, you sisterf--kers."
Due to its controversial nature, consciousness-raising and powerful indictment of Indian society (for its sexism, ritual misogyny, and the inequalities of the caste system), it was banned in India by censors due to its nudity, sex and violence. Devi herself issued her own lawsuit in an effort to prevent its release. Bandit Queen was financed by Britain's Channel Four, and received critical acclaim at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, and at the 1995 New Directors New Films Festival in New York.