Nishtha Jain

Ambika has just come to know that she has failed once again, and she will not be given any more chances. At first, she leaves the city for her home in another city. But very soon the city takes over and her confusions return even more intensely this time.

Amidst COVID lockdowns, India’s farmers rise up on an unprecedented scale against unjust new laws. Over half a million protesters—men and women from all generations, religions, classes and castes—gather and reinvent co-existence while winning a rare victory over the state.

In the heyday of the jute industry, millions of people in Bengal made their living doing this laborious work, which has hardly changed since the industrial revolution. The 100-year-old machinery has been endlessly repaired. State aid kept this sustainable alternative to plastic going, but its future looks bleak.

In Bundelkhand, India, a revolution is in the making among the poorest of the poor, as the fiery women of the Gulabi Gang empower themselves and take up the fight against gender violence, caste oppression and widespread corruption.

A conscientious young gynecologist comes face-to-face with the reality of the 'women's ward' in a government city hospital.

“What sin did I commit to be born a woman?” Lakshmi wonders aloud. A 21- year-old housemaid in Mumbai, she works ten hours a day, seven days a week. One of her employer is Nishtha Jain, who begins to make a documentary that explores their relationship. Nishtha films Lakshmi at home, and at work in various houses. Lakshmi's is a precarious existence to begin with; illness and romance compound her problems in unexpected ways.

A closer look at those who come to the filmmaker's door becomes a way of entering a parallel world of garbage collectors, domestic workers, delivery boys, watchmen-all those who labour long hours in difficult conditions to make middle and upper class lives in the city of Bombay more comfortable. These providers of services and goods often remain faceless and nameless. They are, like the people who enjoy their services, mainly migrants, but their presence here is more sharply defined by the lack of survival options back home. Nothing else explains why they should bear with such harsh living and unfair working conditions. The film will look at the crisscrossing of various lives in the filmmaker's housing colony, gleaning from this microcosm a sense of how millions work, interact and struggle for a firmer foothold in an indifferent, often hostile megacity.

City of Photos explores the little known ethos of neighborhood photo studios in Indian cities, discovering entire imaginary worlds in the smallest of spaces. As full of surprises as the people who frequent these studios are the backdrops they enjoy posing against and the props they choose. These afford fascinating glimpses into individual fantasies and popular tastes.