SHORT NARRATIVE
A resident tea plantation worker dreads her approaching retirement as she is forced to choose between keeping her home or saving her daughter from an exploitative and back breaking labour system.
RELEASED ON NETFLIX INDIA YOUTUBE
SYNOPSIS
Fulmani is a resident tea plantation worker living with her young daughter Aarti. Living close to the jungles, Fulmani lost her husband in a tragic elephant attack. She's up for retirement in a few months and is looking forward to getting her Provident Fund, which she could then use for her post retirement expenses. However, the tea company, in connivance with local politicians, withhold the amount. Fulmani, with a minuscule daily-wage has no other savings to fall back on. And is fast on her way to lose her home unless she sends her daughter to work at the plantation destroying her future.
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EARLY PRODUCTION
FEATURE DOCUMENTARY
Young Kashmiri rapper AHMER JAVED creates conscious music to assert his Kashmiri identity and to document his life under Indian occupation, while constantly being forced to re-assess the price for speaking the truth.
SYNOPSIS
In Kashmir, the truth is swiftly buried. Much like the dead bodies of its people. Those who endure their trauma in silence, have been filling the Jhelum river with their bodies as the rising suicide rates suggest. And those who choose to speak, do so at their own peril. SONGS OF THE UN-SILENCED looks at the conscious hip-hop scene in Kashmir through the lens of it's foremost crusader Ahmer Javed. Writing about his people and their lived experiences in a conflict zone, Ahmer and his friends at the rap collective risk their safety and lives in order to assert their identity and speak their truth. Re-living the trauma each time, performing it under constant threat and struggling to make it commercially viable takes a constant toll on the young musician. And yet, he carries on in the hope that in the years to come, his songs would serve as testimony to the sufferings of his people. And to the fact that not all amongst them could be silenced.
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EARLY DEVELOPMENT
DOCUMENTARY SERIES
From different countries emerge courageous stories of art and activism, as provocative street artists, responding to their local socio-political conflicts, trigger essential dialogues through a universal language of dissent.
SYNOPSIS
STREET ART, whether sanctioned or unsanctioned, has been that perpetual appropriation of public spaces, which has not only shaped the collective aesthetic of cities but is now beginning to emerge as the most prominent voice of dissent throughout the world. Using local symbols or icons, street artists are risking their freedom to critique, disrupt or challenge the status quo, using their art to advocate for social change. Uprooted by war, hounded by governments, silenced by force, these repressed voices, with their backs against the walls have picked up their spray paints and are unapologetically re-claiming public spaces and public discourse.
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SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT
NARRATIVE FEATURE
A prawn catcher, slowly descending into blindness and acute poverty, becomes desperate as her son is forced to join the same factory responsible for displacing their entire community.
SYNOPSIS
Kaveri (70) has lived her whole life by the river. She has been farming prawns here ever since she was young. Today, even as she's losing her sight, she still manages to catch some because her hands have perfected this act over the years. What she fears, though, are the snakes. For they come out of nowhere, become a deterrent for her catch and also leave her with bruised hands. Much like the factory by the river.
Shortly after the setting up of the factory starts threatening the livelihoods of their entire community, Kaveri's son Srikant (48) finds himself with no option for survival other than to work at the factory. Defiant, Kaveri continues to walk miles altogether to find fresh catch so her son doesn't have to work with them. However, with dwindling fish supply and a deteriorating eyesight, Kaveri can barely succeed in keeping her son away. Srikant, guilty yet desperate, struggles to adjust at work since the owners, reeling under the pressures from protestors, become more hostile towards the workers. At home, mother and son, caught between a battle of identity and reality, struggle to survive even as the ground beneath them is shifting fast.
DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Revealing the unknown stories of refugees living in India through the only thing that binds them to their land and their culture - food.
COMMISSIONED BY DISCOVERY INDIA
SYNOPSIS
As per UN records, there were almost 2 lakh refugees living in India in 2018. While a large number of people came from Pakistan and settled in India during the partition, subsequently India has seen refugees fleeing Tibet, migrants from Bangladesh after the 1971 war, Tamils abandoning Sri Lanka during the 80s and some in smaller number from Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion and more recently the Rohingyas facing persecution in Myanmar. However, with public opinions being formed on basis of unreliable information, it is now essential to look at these people beyond numbers and create an understanding of the conditions under which a person is forced to leave behind their homes forever. Refugee Kitchens aims to demystify the “illegal immigrant” by starting a conversation. And to state the obvious, the best conversations are had over food. For food goes beyond simply being a source of sustenance. It is a repository of memories for those with no tangible cultural keepsakes. For those uprooted, food becomes their most portable form of heritage, an umbilical cord that binds them to their beloved homeland.