Film and Television Institute of India

Once upon a time in a village, an old lady steals the rooster and the sun never rises again.

Three young men are putting up an antenna for their amateur radiostation in a city tower block. They want to connect to the ISS space station, which orbits the globe, which they succeed in doing. In return the astronauts report on the weather to their entire audience. In the meantime, the young man who holds the antenna eavesdrops on several people talking about all sorts of things.

FTII Diploma film by Mani Kaul

Glimpses of lives from a village in Assam reveal the relationship between its history and the present. People’s lives and beliefs are entangled with ecological strings , as nature stands witness to the narratives that unfolded there. A young boy, Rahul, hopes to write a book on his experience of growing up in this village. His mother, being deeply connected with nature can sense messages and signs arising from nature.. Urmila, a pregnant lady, is driven by sensorial experiences. But, In contrast to the serenity and harmonious living; there lurks a violent societal past.These peaceful and quiet lives intersect in a space where traumatic memories of death and loss in Assam’s thirty years of secessionist movement keep resurfacing.

The cinema hall as a liminal space during a matinee show, and the experience it evokes.

The story deals with a professional hitman, who falls in love with the woman he sets out to murder.

People are involved in daily encounters without ever being aware of how they are connected with one another. A taxi reveals all.

Shama and Ravi are members of a Marxist party. Shama loves classical Indian music, a luxury of a few, and Ravi is in love with quotations and the philosophy of Marx - a need of the masses. Due to a strike, Ravi is compelled to work full-time for the party. Shama decides to give up music reluctantly and joins Ravi.

An ethnographic film exploring the legend of Mahadeo Koli Goddess Kalsu, whose presence remains impregnated in the consciousness of the women of the tribe today.

Tackling the theme of identity from the perspective of Asian and Afro-Caribbean actors, the film emerged from an acting workshop exploring the relationship between acting idioms in theatre and cinema led by Kumar Shahani and Alaknanda Samarth.

FTII Diploma film for acting students of 1964-65 by Ritwik Ghatak

An exploration of the interconnected experiences of queerness and illness, this film navigates personal and collective journeys through medical spaces, sexual violence, and survival, displays the profound impact on body and identity.

Three siblings, brother Dinu and two sisters Anu and Buri meet on a seashore one morning after their mother's death. They reminiscence about their mother and her relentless journey in search of 'home'. Gradually as they dwell through their personal memories of 'mother' they unknowingly enter into unknown dark zones of mother and their own lives. The spirits of their ancestors too become part of their stories as the two sisters preform their memories. Dreams, fantasies, memories and reality starts to overlap to form a complex image of 'mother' in search of home.

Kaki is a 60-year-old widow who lives with her Nepali maid, Malti. The film takes place on one afternoon in their house where a flower blossoms in the balcony. Malti meets a boy (a sailor) from her hometown unexpectedly.

A personal exploration of one's lost identity, reflecting upon the oral literature passed through generations within the Gor-Banjara tribe

A man from Assam working in Maharashtra encounters the foreign city when he is asked to get a fake ID card made to continue his job.

Set in 1944, against the backdrop of Mahatma Gandhi's visit to a village, it is the story of a mother who faces a crisis and whose faith in Gandhi's message is put to test.

A man has gone missing while teleporting. His pregnant wife must fight the system to try to get him back.

Through faces and bodies of real life labourers emerges an epistolary account of a daily wage owner who suddenly finds himself out of work one day. As rampant industrialisation surges, a new class is born - a crowd of nomadic migrant workers whose lives are a series of transitions in search of work. Folk tale and memory as witnesses to this rapidly changing world through their eyes.

An act of violence resonates through the night, touching upon the lives of different characters, who otherwise would not necessarily exist in each other’s daily narrative. The story is seen through the self contained world of seven characters as they drift along the otherwise mundane night meandering around the graphical symmetry of a ‘modern’ city. The story is based on excerpts taken from a novel by Haruki Murakami by the same name