Kate Ryan Brewer

Forced child marriage is a huge problem and a human rights issue for women and girls in this country. The fact that there aren’t federal laws against anyone under 18 marrying is an indication that the patriarchy overwhelmingly still calls the shots in the US. This is the subject of the new documentary Knots: A Forced Marriage Story, from documentarian Kate Ryan Brewer.

If the topic at the center of the documentary Knots: A Forced Marriage Story is news to you, not to worry. As indie filmmaker Kate Ryan Brewer revealed in a recent interview, “I tend to think of myself as being connected to issues, and I care deeply about a range of issues, but I had no idea that forced and child marriage was still happening in the United States.”

Writer-director Kate Ryan Brewer begins her documentary Knots: A Forced Marriage Story with a shocking statistic: Between the years 2000 and 2010, the number of child marriages in the United States was 248,000. Knots then focuses on the stories of three women. In each of their cases, religion was the driving factor. Fraidy Reese, Sara Tasneem, and Nina Van Harn were indoctrinated from birth, taught that a woman must marry. Her role? Never think, never question, and always submit to the whim of her husband.