We are all displaced in our own ways,” Indian-Australian filmmaker and author Nandita Chakraborty tells us over the phone from her home in Melbourne. Earlier this month, she was in the city to attend the premiere of her documentary Shared Table: Regional Heroes at the Mumbai International Film Festival. The film brings together the stories of four Australian migrants who left homes and families to forge new narratives of identity, survival, and hope in regional Australia.

The theme of migration dominates on both sides of the camera. “It was also made by migrants,” Chakraborty, who was born in Kolkata to Bengali film producer Dhiresh Kumar Chakraborty who produced films like Mrinal Sen’s Akaler Shandhaney and Chalchitra, tells us. Chakraborty moved to Australia in 2000, and points to other members of her crew like producer Niru Tripathi, who left Nepal about 15 years ago, and cinematographer Sam Thang Man of Burmese-Chin descent, who has lived in Malaysia and New Zealand. All of them have known the struggles and resilience of starting a new life in a new country.