Bitter Chestnut

Fear and paranoia pervade life in rural Punjab of the ’80s, before and after Operation Blue Star, as separatists clash with security forces.

A family living in a Punjab village deals with social and labor inequities until a fight breaks out during a lunar eclipse.

After 15 years in prison, for committing a murder to save his father’s honour, Modan returns to his village in Punjab. In his absence, the village’s power structure has shifted towards a landowner, to the detriment of his family. Worse still: his brother is the landowner’s lapdog.

We all live on the same planet, under one sun which nurtures and renews our unique and common hopes for the future. No matter how much we differ from each other in color, ethnicity and belief, we all share the same source of life, united in our destinies. An omnibus film on the topic of Turkish - Armenian relations.

A foul odour – maybe similar to the one that every year befell the small town in which Gabriel García Márquez’s story Sea of Lost Time is set – has wafted through the corridors of the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune since Gajēndra Cauhān was appointed head of that institution. One of the biggest scandals of his administration was the termination of a graduation film production for acting students Gurviṃdar Singh had set out to direct, based on Gabriel García Márquez’s above-mentioned story; the decision felt dubiously motivated, to say the least, as Singh was known to be a vociferous critic of Cauhān. Never one to give up, Singh looked at the materials shot so far – and found therein a moving gem of realist cinema that honours the feel and substance of lines such as: "They swim to the depth of the sea, passing various levels in time. They see the bodies of their dead floating past them."

Documentary on a Punjabi Folk Singer

Based on a newspaper story, Ghuspaithiya is the satirical tale of a pigeon that apparently crosses a national border into Punjab and is investigated by the police as a spy.