Shorts & Documentaries from FTII

Synopsis

Vijay Dutt Ko Pyaas Kyun Lagti Hai (Hindi/ 2026/ 35 mins) Dir. Sandeep Chatterjee. K, a young filmmaker dreaming of a modern Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa, is pulled by a mysterious woman’s voice into a forest on a hill. There, in an abandoned factory, he meets ghosts — joyful souls with sad pasts — who are planning a revolution. 

Whispers Around a Womb (Marathi, Hindi/ 2025/ 20 mins) Dir.Shivam Anand. Despite medical progress and awareness drives, HIV-positive people in Beed, Maharashtra, are still shunned from homes, schools, and jobs. Drawing from real stories in Pali village, the aim is to portray their demonised, fearful existence. 

Of Mothers and Daughters (Marathi, Hindi/ 2025/ 20 mins) Dir. Deepjyoti Deka. The film follows women beedi rollers in Gharkul, Solapur, whose hands — conditioned by endless repetition — begin to move with a memory of their own. As labour, rest, and life blur into one act, it probes questions of agency, alienation, embodiment, and the invisibility of feminised work. 

When the Sirens Went Still (Marathi/ 2025/ 16 mins) Dir. Dhiraj Singhai. In a decaying village shuttered by its mill's closure, a desperate man robs gold from corpses to survive. Trapped mid-robbery, he mutilates himself to break free — unaware the mill has just reopened, making his sacrifice tragically pointless.

Here Among Strangers (Marathi/ 2025/ 13 mins) Dir.Mohak Gandhi. At the heart of this changing terrain is Sudhakar Bhujbal, a seventy-year-old farmer who still tends his small patch of soil in what is now the city of Wakad. His family, neighbours, and community long ago sold their lands and moved into high-rises. Sudhakar remains—not out of resistance or ideology, but because farming is the only life he knows, and the one he chooses. As the city rises around him, he stays grounded, unhurried, untouched by the capitalist urgency that surrounds him.