The director of "Getting Married", which bagged the best Canadian short-film award at last week's Vancouver Asian Film Festival, is sad about the abuse of women in the Indo-Canadian community. In her 18-minute movie, Indian-born Rani Sandhu tells the story of a girl compelled by her parents to marry as soon as she becomes a young adult.

She admits that when she was writing the script, she had horrific incidents of violence against Indo-Canadian women by their parents in the back of her mind.

Reacting to the murder of a Maple Ridge beautician who had married a rickshaw driver in India, and the recent murder of another B.C. Indo-Canadian girl by her father, who was outraged over her relationship with a Caucasian boy, Sandhu said: "I had thought about such incidents. But one can always send across a message more gently without portraying the exact situation."

Sandhu told the Georgia Straight that although this brutality upset her, she feels that "Getting Married" will facilitate communication between the generations. The director said her film is primarily focused on that very generation gap. "I feel that the communication between the parents and the children is not taking place. I have tried to open another space to fill this gap."

According to Sandhu, the film's story is similar to that of any woman caught between two cultures. The main character, Amrit (Rekha Sharma), is dating a Caucasian boy while her mother is looking for a "suitable" match for her daughter. Amrit must decide between her boyfriend and men from her own community. Sandhu said she knows a lot of women who are dating somebody outside their culture. "When people ask me if it is autobiographical, I say, 'Yes, to some extent,' because I know women who are exactly doing that."

Sandhu is open to her community's reaction and hopes that Indo-Canadians will watch "Getting Married". "It does not bother me if people feel differently. I have to be myself. For me, more important is that my work opens a space for reaction and dialogue."

The film was funded by Citytv and will be shown on that station as part of its CineCity: Vancouver's Stories initiative (check www .citytv.com/vancouver/tvshows_Cine City.aspx for schedule updates). But Sandhu wants to take it directly to the Indo-Canadian community and is looking into ways of doing that.

Born in the Jalandhar district of Punjab, Sandhu was two when her parents emigrated to Canada in 1976. She has worked in the policy department of the now defunct Ministry of Women's Equality here in the past, and she has been to Zimbabwe, where she worked for a nonprofit body promoting indigenous filmmaking. Sandhu also worked as a production assistant for Raj Purewal's "Loves Me Not". She earned a diploma in digital filmmaking from the Art Institute of Vancouver (previously called CDIS) before stepping into the film business.