Documentary Films from IDPA

Synopsis

Rail Cinema - A Journey through stories (Hindi/ 2025/ 40 mins) Dirs. Sachin Susheel and Dr.Saurabh Khawle. ‘Rail Cinema – A Journey Through Stories’ is a documentary film that explores the emotional, cultural, and cinematic bond between Indian Railways and storytelling in Indian cinema. It highlights how trains have served as powerful symbols of love, separation, migration, dreams, and human connection across generations of films. From memorable scenes on railway platforms to journeys that shaped iconic narratives, the film captures the timeless presence of railways in visual storytelling. It presents rail travel not just as transport, but as a moving stage for countless unforgettable stories.  

Nagar Swaraj: We Are the Government (Hindi/ / 2025/ 27 mins) Dir. Vatsala Shoukla. Nagar Swaraj: We Are the Government emerges where constitutional imagination meets the lived realities of the city, tracing the unfinished promise of participatory democracy in urban India. This is not a conventional documentary. By placing the camera in the hands of women grassroots leaders—Area Sabha representatives—the film shifts the axis of authorship. The gaze is no longer external; the women are not being represented—they are representing. As they navigate everyday struggles around water, sanitation, safety, and dignity, the film creates a people’s cartography of the city—and asks who truly shapes urban life when citizens begin to claim government as their own.

Tulasi - Mother of Forest (English/ 2025/ 25 mins) Dir. K.Gopinath. This is the life story of the 83 year old Padma shri awardee Tulasi Govinda Gowda who had at the very early age as a child love for nature and environment. Living in a small village Honnali, Ankola Taluk, Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka adjacent to River Kali, 20 kilometer from Taluk head quarters she has planted more than 30 lakhs of plants in the forest and nurtured them with environmental concern. Tulasi Gowda cannot explain how she gathered her knowledge of the forest, but says it is as if she can speak the language of the forest. In the traditions of her. Tulasi Gowda is known by environmentalists as the Encyclopedia of the Forest and by her tribe as the tree goddess because of her knowledge of the forest and its plants. She is known for her ability to identify the mother tree of every species of tree in the forest no matter where it is.