20 September,2026 10:10 AM IST | Mumbai | Junisha Dama
Still from Zadavar Korleli Gosht (A Story Carved on a Tree)
For Sainath Ganuwad, his Marathi short film, Zadavar Korleli Gosht (A Story Carved on a Tree), began some years ago. An FTII graduate, Ganuwad was working during a fellowship on ideas around generational trauma, survival and stories passed from one generation to another. The script didn't come together immediately. The title captures what he was trying to say. "Our stories are not written in books," he says. "My ancestors have written those stories on stones, on trees, or through oral traditions."
Sainath Ganuwad
The film follows a young girl trying to get to school. She asks why the bus doesn't come to her village. The film's concerns are rooted in Ganuwad's own experience. Growing up in Nanded and later moving to Pune, he became conscious of the gulf between urban privilege and rural access. Even caste, he says, was something he understood more clearly only by looking back at his childhood. "When I was small, I didn't know caste. When I look back, then I realise."
Shot near Khed Shivapur outside Pune with a small, self-funded team, the film turned its restrictions into part of its process. "When creativity gets deadlines or restrictions, then it actually blooms more," he says.
Crew members doubled up on jobs and worked within a three-day shoot. Winning the Indian Competition at the Bengaluru International Short Film Festival and becoming Academy Awards-eligible wasn't the original ambition. Ganuwad wanted something more fundamental. "We feel that by making a film, you actually learn filmmaking."
For Shenpenn Khymsar, 4 Rivers 6 Ranges isn't merely a film about the Chushi Gangdruk's mission to take the 14th Dalai Lama to safety in 1959. It is tied to his own relationship with exile, Tibet and a generation whose memories are disappearing.
Still from 4 Rivers 6 Ranges
Khymsar spent 12 years researching and making the film, speaking to people connected to that history and digging through books and archival material. The film will be released in theatres on September 18, a first for a Tibetan story in India.
The idea began when Khymsar was reading about the mission. "Someone should make a movie on this. But at that time, I didn't think it would be me," he says.
Shenpenn Khymsar
Watching an older generation in exile disappear, he began to feel an urgency around who would preserve the Tibetan narrative. "The Chinese are always going on with their propaganda, I felt that we are losing grip of the Tibetan narrative," he says. For Khymsar, the answer was cinema. "I have put my blood and sweat into this film, literally."
The shoot he estimates should have taken 45 days was completed in fewer than 19. He wrote the screenplay, handled action direction and worked on the music too.
After the film's international festival run, it was the response of audiences that gave him another kind of reassurance. "Audiences felt immersed, transported to that era."
For Khymsar, though, the larger purpose remains the same: holding on to stories before they disappear.
Garvit Singh was studying for his postgraduate medical entrance exams when a one-hour study break changed the course of his life. He put on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. By the end of it, he had decided he wanted to make films. "It was very, very instant," he says.
Still from Zimmedari Umeed Azadi Sandyeep
What struck him wasn't simply the film's horror. It was the possibility of art itself. "You realise the power of art at that time. You realise how infinite it is..."
That impulse became Zimmedari Umeed Azadi Sandyeep, a psychological thriller about Sandeep, whose attempt to reconnect with his father during a road trip is disrupted by a childhood bully.
The film itself grew out of another image: a bruised 10-year-old boy in torn, muddy clothes standing outside a modest house. "That image stayed with me because it portrays a loss of innocence, a sense of getting detached from your family, trying to get back to your family."
Singh knew his unconventional first feature was unlikely to attract conventional financing. So he stopped waiting. He financed the film himself, drawing on his earnings as a practising doctor and borrowing from friends. The film cost approximately Rs 65 lakh.
Garvit Singh
Yet he says the money barely entered his head while he was shooting. "I was too engrossed in filming. I just wanted to do it."
The bigger shock came afterwards. "Making a film is very, very, addictive," he says. "It's what will happen after making a film. That's the most difficult part." For an indie filmmaker, he says, finding an audience can be harder than making the film. His experience has taught him that platforms help, but backing still matters. Now on BookMyShow Stream, the film marks the end of one journey and the beginning of another. "I want to move on to my second project."
