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.

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

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.

Set in a dimly lit, nearly deserted cinema hall, the film follows a protagonist whose encounters with a fellow moviegoer, a projectionist, and the presence of an unseen voyeur take on a charged, sexual undercurrent. As boundaries between experience and liminality blur, the cinema hall becomes a space of shared, ambiguous encounters where desire, tension, and vulnerability intertwine.

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

A short based on a sequence-shot portraying the idea of emergent female sensitivity to the fragility of male desire.

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.

Due to the caste dynamics and hierachy prevailing in Golegaon as in the rest of the country, the Adivasi people in the village struggle to hold onto their traditions and assert their own individual identity as a community in the very place that has belonged to them for generations.

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

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

Snippets of events in an urban police station unfold the relationship between SI Piyush and ASI Ratika. Though they share an intimacy, Ratika is not yet ready to be in a relationship. Another SI Vishwanath has a sense of affection towards her, but he can not express his feelings to her

This experimental documentary explores the complex intersection of queerness and illness, examining how these experiences shape both the body and identity. Set against the backdrop of medical spaces, the film delves into the visible and invisible imprints left by diagnostic processes, surgeries, and medical interventions. While drawing from deeply personal experiences, the narrative expands into a collective exploration, integrating voices and documentation of others to offer a more layered and multifaceted portrayal. The documentary also addresses the internal impact of sexual violence, highlighting how individuals navigate crises of body and identity within this context. Through its experimental approach, the film offers an intimate yet expansive reflection on queerness, illness, and survival, inviting viewers to engage with its themes in a deeply contemplative way.

Madhav, a playful 8-year-old boy who has spent most of his time playing outdoors in the village, is being sent to town for educational purposes.

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

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.

Sea of Lost Time is an allegory set in an undefined time and space, evoking the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, inspired by his characters. A soldier comes back from the dead to a seaside village. He reminisces on the time lost while he was away, like a sea between his past and the dysfunctional present. Through him we discover a motley of characters: a rag-tag musical band, a man locked up inside an abandoned horse stable, his sister, also the soldier’s lover and who has been bemoaning the loss. An impressionistic view of the intertwined lives of those inhabiting imaginary spaces, with an underpinning of social and political metaphors.

Ambika has just come to know that she has failed once again, and she will not be given any more chances. At first, she leaves the city for her home in another city. But very soon the city takes over and her confusions return even more intensely this time.

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.

FTII Diploma film by Mani Kaul

Near Mogulmari in the south of West-Bengal in India lies a mountain known locally as Sakhisona. The stories about it are still sung by local musicians. A dig nearby recently uncovered the remains of a monastery as well as 6th-century objects. The film shows the objects unearthed and re-enacts the stories and folklore.