Lenin's dream is Shivani's future.

THE parents of a three-year-old girl in India believe her to be the reincarnation of their son, and train her to become an Olympic archery champion.

When two-year old Dolly Shivani set a national archery record in India, she appeared in international press as a striking and incongruous image: a tiny girl peering with uncanny intensity down the shaft of an arrow. 

Dolly’s aging parents believe her to be the reincarnation of her brother Lenin, a champion archer who died in an accident at the age of 26.  They broke through the depression that followed their son’s death by having another child—but not just any child. While Dolly was still in a surrogate mother’s womb, her parents resolved to raise her to fulfill Lenin’s dream of an Olympic medal.

SHIVANI immerses us in Dolly’s life at the archery academy, where her parents’ devotion is as clear as the pressure she faces to honor the memory of their son.